PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION

FROM THALES TO HUXLEY

WITH AN INTERMEDIATE CHAPTER ON
THE CAUSES OF ARREST OF THE MOVEMENT

BY

EDWARD CLODD

PRESIDENT OF THE FOt^tOllE SOCIETY

AUTHOR OF THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD,

THE STORY OF CREATION,

THE STORY OF PRIMITIVE MAN, ETC.

IVITH PORTRAITS

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1897

QH
30/

Copyright, 1897,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

O'NEILL LIBRARY
% BOSTON COLLEGE

O

% V

TO MY BELOVED

A. A. L.

WHOSE FELLOWSHIP AND HELP
HAVE SWEETENED LIFE.

PREFACE.

This book needs only brief introduction. It at-
tempts to tell the story of the origin of the Evolution
idea in Ionia, and, after long arrest, of the revival
of that idea in modern times, when its profound and
permanent influence on thought in all directions,
and, therefore, on human relations and conduct, is
apparent.

Between birth and revival there were the cen-
turies of suspended animation, when the nepenthe
of dogma drugged the reason; the Church teaching,
and the laity mechanically accepting, the sufficiency
of the Scriptures and of the General Councils to de-
cide on matters which lie outside the domain of
both. Hence the necessity for particularizing the
causes which actively arrested advance in knowledge
for sixteen himdred years.

In indicating the parts severally played in the
Renascence of Evolution by a small group of illus-
trious men, the writer, through the courtesy of Mr.

V

vi - PREFACE,

Herbert Spencer, has been permitted to see the origi-
nal documents which show that the theory of Evolu-
tion as a whole; i. e., as dealing with the non-living,
as well as with the living, contents of the Universe,
was formulated by Mr. Spencer in the year pre-
ceding the pubHcation of the Origin of Species.

ROSEMONT, TUFNELL PARK, LONDON, N.,

14th December, i8g6.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

PAGE

Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Lucretius —

B. c. 600-A. D. 50 . . . . ,1

PART II.
The Arrest of Inquiry — a. d. 50-A. d. 1600.

1. From the Early Christian Period to the time

of Augustine — a. d. 50-A. d. 400 . . 37

2. From Augustine to Lord Bacon — a. d. 400-

A. D. 1600 ...... 73

PART III.
The Renascence of Science — A. d. 1600 onward

99

PART IV.

Modern Evolution —

1. Darwin and Wallace . . , .126

2. Herbert Spencer . . . . .175

3. Thomas Henry Huxley .... 201

Index ....... 267

vii

" Nature, which governs the whole, will soon change all
things which thou seest, and out of their substance will
make other things, and again other things from the sub-
stance of them, in order that the world may be ever new."

Marcus Aureliiis, vii, 25.

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

PART I.

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION FROM THALES
TO LUCRETIUS.

B. C. 600-A. D. 50.

" These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but
having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them." — He-
brews xi. 13.

*' One event is always the son of another, and we
must never forget the parentage," said a Bechuana
chief to CasaHs the missionary. The barbarian phi-
losopher spoke wiser than he knew, for in his words
lay that doctrine of continuity and unity which is the
creed of modern science. They are a suitable text
to the discourse of this chapter, the design of which
is to bring out what the brilliancy of present-day
discoveries tends to throw into shadow, namely, the
antiquity of the ideas of which those discoveries are
the result. Although the Theory of Evolution, as we
define it, is new, the speculations which made it pos-
sible are, at least, twenty-five centuries old. In-
deed, it is not practicable, since the remote past
yields no documents, to fix their beginnings. More-
over, charged, as they are, with many crudities, they
are not detachable from the barbaric conceptions of

2 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

the Universe which are the philosophies of past, and
the legends of present, times.

Fontenelle, a writer of the last century, shrewdly
remarked that " all nations made the astounding part
of their myths while they were savage, and retained
them from custom and religious conservatism." For,
as Walter Bagehot argues in his brilliant little book
on Physics and Politics, and as all anthropological
research goes to prove, the lower races are non-
progressive both through fear and instinct. And the
majority of the members of higher races have not
escaped from the operation of the same causes.
Hence the persistence of coarse and grotesque ele-
ments in speculations wherein man has made grad-
ual approach to the truth of things; hence, too —
the like phenomena having to be interpreted — the
similarity of the explanation of them. And as primi-
tive myth embodies primitive theology, primitive
morals, and primitive science, the history of beliefs
shows how few there be who have escaped from the
tyranny of that authority and sanctity with which
the lapse of time invests old ideas.

Dissatisfaction is a necessary condition of pro-
gress; and dissatisfaction involves opposition. As
Grant Allen puts it, in one of his most felicitous
poems:

If systems that be are the order of God,

Revolt is a part of the order.

Hence a stage in the history of certain peoples when,
in questioning what is commonly accepted, intellec-

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 3

tual freedom is born. Such a stage was markedly
reached whenever, for example, an individual here
and there challenged the current belief about the
beginnings and nature of things, beliefs held because
they were taught, not because their correspondence
with fact had been examined.

A pioneer (French, pionnier; Italian, pedone;
from Latin pedes) is, literally, a foot-soldier; one
who goes before an army to clear the road of ob-
structions. Hence the application of the term to
men who are in the van of any new movement;
hence its special fitness in the present connection, as
designating men whose speculations cut a pathway
through jungles of myth and legend to the realities
of things. The Pioneers of Evolution — the first on
record to doubt the truth of the theory of special
creation, whether as the work of departmental gods
or of one Supreme Deity, matters not — -lived in
Greece about the time already mentioned; six cen-
turies before Christ. Not in the early stages of the
Evolution idea, in the Greece limited, as now, to a
rugged peninsula in the southeastern corner of Eu-
rope and to the surrounding islands, but in the Greece
which then included Ionia, on the opposite sea-
board of Asia Minor.

From times beyond memory or record, the isl-
ands of the yEgean had been the nurseries of culture
and adventure. Thence the maritime inhabitants
had spread themselves both east and west, feeding
the spirit of inquiry, and imbibing influences from

4 PIONEERS OE EVOLUTION,

older civilizations, notably of Egypt and Chaldsea.
But, mix as they might with other peoples, the
Greeks never lost their own strongly marked indi-
viduality, and, in imparting what they had acquired
or discovered to younger peoples, that is, younger
in culture, they stamped it with an impress all their
own.

At the later period with which we are deahng,
refugees from the Peloponnesus, who would not sub-
mit to the Dorian yoke, had been long settled in
Ionia. To what extent they had been influenced
by contact with their neighbours is a question which,
even were it easy to answer, need not occupy us
here. Certain it is that trade and travel had widened
their intellectual horizon, and although India lay too
remote to touch them closely (if that incurious,
dreamy East had touched them, it would have taught
them nothing), there was Babylonia with her star-
watchers, and Egypt with her land-surveyors. From
the one, these lonians probably gained knowledge
of certain periodic movements of some of the heav-
enly bodies; and from the other, a few rules of
mensuration, perchance a little crude science. But
this is conjecture. For all the rest that she evolved,
and with which she enriched the world, ancient
Greece is in debt to none.

While the Oriental shrunk from quest after
causes, looking, as Professor Butcher aptly remarks
in his Aspects of the Greek Genius, on " each fresh
gain of earth as so much robbery of heaven," the

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 5

Greek eagerly sought for the law governing the facts
around him. And in Ionia was born the idea foreign
to the East, but which has become the starting-point
of all subsequent scientific inquiry — the idea that
Nature works by fixed laws. Sir Henry Maine said
that '' except the blind forces of Nature, nothing
moves which is not Greek in its origin," and we feel
how hard it is to avoid exaggeration when speaking
of the heritage bequeathed by Greece as the giver
of every fruitful, quickening idea which has devel-
oped human faculty on all sides, and enriched every
province of life. Amid serious defects of character,
as craftiness, avariciousness, and unscrupulousness,
the Greeks had the redeeming grace of pursuit after
knowledge which naught could baffle (Plato, Repub-
lic, vol. iv, p. 435), and that healthy outlook on things
which saved them from morbid introspection. There
arose among them no Simeon Stylites to mount his
profitless pillar; no filth-ingrained fakir to waste life
in contemplating the tip of his nose; no schoolman
to idly speculate how many angels could dance upon
a needle's point; or to debate such fatuous questions
as the language which the saints in heaven will speak
after the Last Judgment.

In his excellent and cautious survey of Early
Greek Philosophy, which we mainly follow in this
section. Professor Burnet says that the real advance
made by the lonians was through their *' leaving off
telling tales. They gave up the hopeless task of
describing what was when as yet there was nothing,

6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

and asked instead what all things really are now."
For the early notions of the Greeks about nature,
being an inheritance from their barbaric ancestors,
were embodied in myths and legends bearing strong
resemblance to those found among the uncivilized
tribes of Polynesia and elsewhere in our day. For
example, the old nature-myth of Cronus separating
heaven and earth by the mutilation of Uranus occurs
among Chinese, Japanese, and Maoris, and among
the ancient Hindus and Egyptians.

The earliest school of scientific speculation was
at Miletus, the most flourishing city of Ionia. Thales,
whose name heads the list of the " Seven Sages,"
was its founder. As with other noted philosophers
of this and later periods, neither the exact date of his
birth nor of his death are known, but the sixth
century before Christ may be held to cover the period
w^hen he '' flourished."

That " nothing comes into being out of nothing,
and that nothing passes away into nothing," was the
conviction with which he and those who followed
him started on their quest. All around was change;
everything always becoming something else; " all in
motion Hke streams." There must be that which is
the vehicle of all the changes, and of all the motions
which produce them. What, therefore, was this per-
manent and primary substance? in other words, of
what is the world made? And Thales, perhaps
through observing that it could become vaporous,
Hquid, and solid in turn; perhaps — if, as tradition

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. j

records, he visited Egypt — through watching the
wonder-working, Hfe-giving Nile; perhaps as doubt-
less sharing the current belief in an ocean-washed
earth, said that the primary substance was Water.
Anaximander, his friend and pupil, disagreeing with
what seemed to him a too concrete answer, argued,
in more abstract fashion, that '' the material cause
and first element of things was the Infinite." This
material cause, which he was the first thus to name,
" is neither water nor any other of what are now
called the elements''' (we quote from Theophrastus,
the famous pupil of Aristotle, born at Eresus in Les-
bos, 371 B. c). Perhaps, following Professor Bur-
net's able guidance through the complexities of defi-
nitions, the term Boundless best expresses the
*' one eternal, indestructible substance out of which
everything arises, and into which everything once
more returns " ; in other words, the exhaustless stock
of matter from which the waste of existence is being
continually made good,

Anaximander was the first to assert the origin of
life from the non-living, i. e., " the moist element as
it was evaporated by the sun," and to speak of man
as " like another animal, namely, a fish, in the be-
ginning." This looks well-nigh akin to prevision of
the mutability of species, and of what modern biology
has proved concerning the marine ancestry of the
highest animals, although it is one of many ancient
speculations as to the origin of life in slimy matter.
And when Anaximander adds that *' while other

8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

animals quickly find food for themselves, man alone
requires a prolonged period of suckling," he antici-
pates the modern explanation of the "origin of the
rudimentary family through the development of the
social instincts and affections. The lengthening of
the period of infancy involves dependence on the
parents, and evolves the sympathy which lies at the
base of social relations. (Cf. Fiske's Outlines of Cos-
mic Philosophy, vol. ii, pp. 344, 360.)

In dealing with speculations so remote, we have
to guard against reading modern meanings into writ-
ings produced in ages whose limitations of knowl-
edge were serious, and whose temper and standpoint
are wholly alien to our own. For example, shrewd
as are some of the guesses made by Anaximander,
we find him describing the sun as " a ring twenty-
eight times the size of the earth, like a cartwheel
with the felloe hollow and full of fire, showing the
fire at a certain point, as if through the nozzle of a
pair of bellows." And if he made some approach
to truer ideas of the earth's shape as " convex and
round," the world of his day, as in the days of
Homer, thought of it as flat and as floating on the
all-surrounding water. The Ionian philosophers
lacked not insight, but the scientific method of start-
ing with working hypotheses, or of observation be-
fore theory, was as yet unborn.

In this brief survey of the subject there will be
no advantage in detailing the various speculations
which followed on the heels of those of Thales and

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. g

Anaximander, since these varied only in non-essen-
tials; or, like that of Pythagoras and his school,
which Zeller regards as the outcome of the teachings
of Anaximander, were purely abstract and fanciful.
As is well known, the Pythagoreans, whose philoso-
phy was ethical as well as cosmical, held that all
things are made of numbers, each of which they be-
lieved had its special character and property. A be-
lief in such symbols as entities seems impossible to
us, but its existence in early thought is conceivable
when, as Aristotle says, they were " not separated
from the objects of sense." Even in the present day,
among the eccentric people who still believe in the
modern sham agnosticism, known as theosophy,
and in astrology, we find the delusion that numbers
possess inherent magic or mystic virtues. So far as
the ancients are concerned, " consider," as Mr. Benn
remarks in his Greek Philosophers (vol. i, p. 12), " the
lively emotions excited at a time when multiplica-
tion and division, squaring and cubing, the rule of
three, the construction and equivalence of figures, with
all their manifold applications to industry, com-
merce, fine arts, and tactics, were just as strange and
wonderful as electrical phenomena are to us . . .
and we shall cease to wonder that a mere form of
thought, a lifeless abstraction, should once have been
regarded as the solution of every problem; the cause
of all existence; or that these speculations were more
than once revived in after ages."

Xenophanes of Colophon, one of the twelve

lO PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

Ionian cities of Asia Minor, deserves, however, a
passing reference. He, with Parmenides and Zeno,
are the chief representatives of the Eleatic school,
so named from the city in southwestern Italy where
a Greek colony had settled. Then tendency of that
school was toward metaphysical theories. He was
the first known observer to detect the value of fos-
sils as evidences of the action of water, but his chief
claim to notice rests on the fact that, passing beyond
the purely physical speculations of the Ionian school,
he denied the idea of a primary substance, and theo-
rized about the nature and actions of superhuman
beings. Living at a time "when there was a revival
of old and gross superstitions to which the vulgar
had recourse when fears of invasions arose, he dared
to attack the old and persistent ideas about the gods,
as in the following sentences from the fragments of
his writings:

" Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods
all things that are a shame and a disgrace among
men, theft and adulteries and deception of one an-
other."

'' There never was nor will be a man who has
clear certainty as to what I say about the gods and
about all things; for even if he does chance to say
what is right, yet he himself does not know that it
is so. But all are free to guess."

" Mortals think that the gods were born as they
are, and have senses and a voice and body like their
own. So the Ethiopians make their gods black and

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS, n

snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and
blue eyes."

" There is one god, the greatest among gods and
men, unHke mortals both in mind and body."

Had such heresies been spoken in Athens, where
the effects of a religious revival were still in force,
the " secular arm " of the archons would probably
have made short work of Xenophanes. But in Elea,
or in whatever other colony he may have lived, " the
gods were left to take care of themselves."

Greater than the philosophers yet named is
Heraclitus of Ephesus, nicknamed " the dark," from
the obscurity of his style. His original writings have
shared the fate of most documents of antiquity, and
exist, like many of these, only in fragments pre-
served in the works of other authors. Many of
his aphorisms are indeed dark sayings, but those
that yield their meaning are full of truth and sug-
gestiveness. As for example:

" The eyes are more exact witnesses than the
ears."

" You will not find out the boundaries of soul by
travelling in any direction."

" Man is kindled and put out like a light in the
nighttime."

" Man's character is his fate."

But these have special value as keys to his phi-
losophy:

" You cannot step twice into the same rivers ;
for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you."

12 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

"Homer was wrong in saying: 'Would that
strife might perish from among gods and men! ' He
did not see that he was praying for the destruction
of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all
things would pass away."

Flux or movement, says Heraclitus, is the all-
pervading law of things, and in the opposition of
forces, by which things are kept going, there is un-
derlying harmony. Still on the quest after the pri-
mary substance whose manifestations are so various,
he found it in Fire, since " the quantity of it in a
flame burning steadily appears to remain the same;
the flames seems to be what we call a ' thing.' And
yet the substance of it is continually changing. It
is always passing away in smoke, and its place is
always being taken by fresh matter from the fuel
that feeds it. This is just what we want. If we re-
gard the world as an ' ever-living fire ' — ' this order,
which is the same in all things, and which no one
of gods or men has made ' — we can understand how
fire is always becoming all things, while all things
are always returning to it." And as is the world, so
is man, made up, like it, both soul and body, of the
fire, the water, and the earth. We are and are not
the same for two consecutive moments; "the fire in
us is perpetually becoming water, and the water
earth, but as the opposite process goes on simul-
taneously we appear to remain the same."

As speculation advanced, it became more and
more applied to details, theories of the beginnings

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

n

of life being followed by theories of the origin of its
various forms. This is a feature of the philosophy
of Empedocles, who flourished in the fifth century
B. c. The advance of Persia westward had led to
migrations of Greeks to the south of Italy and Sicily,
and it was at Agrigentum, in that island, that Empe-
docles was born about 490. He has an honoured
place among the earliest who supplanted guesses
about the world by inquiry into the world itself.
Many legends are told of his magic arts, one of
which, it will be remembered, Matthew Arnold
makes an occasion of some fine reflections in his
poem Empedocles in Etna. The philosopher was
said to have brought back to life a woman who
apparently had been dead for thirty days. As he
ascends the mountain, Pausanias of Gela, with an
address to whom the poem of Empedocles opens,
would fain have his curiosity slaked as to this and
other marvels reported of him:

Ask not the latest news of the last miracle,

Ask not what days and nights

In trance Pantheia lay,

But ask how thou such sights

May'st see without dismay ;

Ask what most helps when known, thou son of Anchitus.

His speculations about things, like those of Par-

menides before him and of Lucretius after him, are

set down in verse. From the remains of his Poem

on Nature we learn that he conceived " the four roots

of all things " to be Fire, Air, Earth, and Water.

They are " fools, lacking far-reaching thoughts, who

14

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

deem that what before was not comes into being, or
that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed."
Therefore the " roots " or elements are eternal and
indestructible. They are acted upon by two forces,
which are also material, Love and Strife; the one
a uniting agent, the other a disrupting agent. From
the four roots, thus operated upon, arise " the colours
and forms " of living things ; trees first, both male
and female, then fragmentary parts of animals, heads
without necks, and " eyes that strayed up and down
in want of a forehead," which, combined together,
produced monstrous forms. These, lacking power
to propagate, perished, and were replaced by "whole-
natured " but sexless '' forms " which " arose from
the earth," and which, as Strife gained the upper
hand, became male and female. Herein, amidst
much fantastic speculation, would appear to be the
germ of the modern theory that the unadapted be-
come extinct, and that only the adapted survive.
Nature kills ofif her failures to make room for her
successes.

Anaxagoras, who was a contemporary of Empe-
docles, interests us because he was the first philoso-
pher to repair to Athens, and the first sufferer for
truth's sake of whom we have record in Greek an-
nals. Because he taught that the sun was a red-
hot stone, and that the moon had plains and ravines
in it, he was put upon his trial, and but for the in-
fluence of his friend, the famous Pericles, might have
suffered death. Speculations, however bold they be,

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

15

pass unheeded till they collide with the popular creed,
and in thus attacking the gods, attack a seemingly
divinely settled order. Athens then, and long after,
while indifferent about natural science, was, under,
the influence of the revival referred to above, actively
hostile to free thinking. The opinions of Anax-
agoras struck at the existence of the gods and
emptied Olympus. If the sky was but an air-filled
space, what became of Zeus? if the sun was only a
fiery ball, what became of Apollo? Mr. Grote says
(History of Greece, vol. i, p. 466) that " in the view
of the early Greek, the description of the sun, as
given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have
appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and im-
pious; even in later times, Anaxagoras and other
astronomers incurred the charge of blasphemy for
dispersonifying HeHos." Of Socrates, who was him-
self condemned to death for impiety in denying old
gods and introducing news ones, the same authority
writes : " Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, be-
longed to the divine class of phenomena, in which
human research was insane, fruitless, and impious."
So Demos and his " betters " clung, as the majority
still cling, to the myths of their forefathers. They re-
paired to the oracles, and watched for the will of the
gods in signs and omens.

In his philosophy Anaxagoras held that there
was a portion of everything in everything, and that
things are variously mixed in infinite numbers of
seeds, each after its kind. From these, through the

1 6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

action of an external cause, called Nous, which also
is material, although the " thinnest of all things and
the purest," and " has power over all things," there
arose plants and animals. It is probable, as Pro-
fessor Burnet remarks, '' that Anaxagoras substituted
Nous, still conceived as a body, for the Love and
Strife of Empedocles simply because he wished
to retain the old Ionic doctrine of a substance that
* knows ' all things, and to identify this with the
new theory of a substance that ' moves ' all things."
Thus far speculation has run largely on the ori-
gin of life forms, but now we find revival of specula-
tion about the nature of things generally, and the
formulation of a theory which links Greek cosmology
with ^arly nineteenth-century science with Dalton's
Atomic Theory. Democritus of Abdera, who was
born about 460 b. c, has the credit of having elab-
orated an atomic theory, but probably he only further
developed what Leucippus had taught before him.
Of this last-named philosopher nothing whatever is
known; indeed, his existence has been doubted, but
it counts for something that Aristotle gives him the
credit of the discovery, and that Theophrastus, in
the first book of his Opinions, wrote of Leucippus as
follows : " He assumed innumerable and ever-mov-
ing elements, namely, the atoms. And he made their
forms infinite in number, since there was no reason
why they should be of one kind rather than another,
and because he saw that there was unceasing becom-
ing and change in things. He held, further, that

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

17

what is is no more real than what is not, and that
both are aHke causes of the things that come into
being; for he laid down that the substance of the
atoms was compact and full, and he called them
what is, while they moved in the void which he called
what is not, but affirmed to be just as real as what is."
Thus did " he answer the question that Thales had
been the first to ask." '

Postponing further reference to this theory until
the great name of Lucretius, its Roman exponent, is
reached, we find a genuine scientific method making
its first start in the person of Aristotle. This remark-
able man, the founder of the experimental school,
and the Father of Natural History, was born 384
B. c. at Stagira in Macedonia. In his eighteenth
year he left his native place for Athens, where he
became a pupil of Plato. Disappointed, as it is
thought, at not succeeding his master in the Acad-
emy, he removed to Mytilene in'the island of Lesbos,
where he received an invitation from Philip of Mace-
don to become tutor to his son, the famous Alex-
ander the Great. When Alexander went on his ex-
pedition to Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens, teach-
ing in the " school " which his genius raised to the
first rank. There he wrote the greater part of his
works, the completion of some of which was stopped
by his death at Chalcis in 322. The range of his
studies was boundless, but in this brief notice we
must limit our survey — and the more so because Aris-
totle's speculations outside natural history abound in

1 8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

errors — to his pioneer work in organic evolution.
Here, in the one possible method of reaching the
truth, theory follows observation. Stagira lay on the
Strymonic gulf, and a boyhood spent by the seashore
gave Aristotle ample opportunity for noting the vari-
ations, and withal gradations, between marine plants
and animals, among which last-named it should be
noted as proof of his insight that he was keen enough
to include sponges. Here was laid the foundation
of a classification of life-forms on which all corre-
sponding attempts were based. Then, he saw, as
none other before him had seen, and as none after
him saw for centuries, the force of heredity, that
still unsolved problem of biology. Speaking broadly
of his teaching, the details of which would fill pages,
its main features are (i) His insistence on observa-
tion. In his History of Animals he says " we must
not accept a general principle from logic only, but
must prove its application to each fact. For it is
in facts that we must seek general principles, and
these must always accord with facts. Experience
furnishes the particular facts from which induction
is the pathway to general laws." (2) His rejection
of chance and assertion of law, not, following a
common error, of law personified as cause, but as
the term by which we express the fact that certain
phenomena always occur in a certain order. In his
Physics Aristotle says that " Jupiter rains not that
corn may be increased, but from necessity. Simi-
larly, if some one's corn is destroyed by rain, it does

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

19

not rain for this purpose, but as an accidental cir-
cumstance. It does not appear to be from fortune
or chance that it frequently rains in winter, but from
necessity." (3) On the question of the origin of life-
forms he was nearest of all to its modem solution,
setting forth the necessity " that germs should have
been first produced, and not immediately animals;
and that soft mass which first subsisted was the germ.
In plants, also, there is purpose, but it is less distinct;
and this shows that plants were produced in the same
manner as animals, not by chance, as by the union
of olives with grape vines. Similarly, it may be
argued, that there should be an accidental genera-
tion of the germs of things, but he who asserts this
subverts Nature herself, for Nature produces those
things which, being continually moved by a certain
principle contained in themselves, arrive at a cer-
tain end." In the eagerness of theologians to dis-
cover proof of a belief in one God among the old phi-
losophers, the references made by Aristotle to a
*' perfecting principle," an " efficient cause," a " prime
mover," and so forth, have been too readily construed
as denoting a monotheistic creed which, reminding
us of the " one god " of Xenophanes, is also akin to
the Personal God of Christianity. " The Stagirite,"
as Mr. Benn remarks (Greek Philosophers, vol. i,
p. 312), " agrees with Catholic theism, and he agrees
with the First Article of the English Church, though
not with the Pentateuch, in saying that God is with-
out parts or passions, but there his agreement ceases.

20 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Excluding such a thing as divine interference with
all Nature, his theology, of course, excludes the pos-
sibility of revelation, inspiration, miracles, and
grace." He is a being who does not interest himself
in human affairs.

But, differ as the commentators may as to Aris-
totle's meaning, his assumed place in the orthodox
line led, as will be seen hereafter, to the acceptance
of his philosophy by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo,
in the fourth century, and by other Fathers of the
Church, so that the mediaeval theories of the Bible,
blended with Aristotle, represent the sum of knowl-
edge held as sufficient until the discoveries of Co-
pernicus in the sixteenth century upset the Ptolemaic
theory with its fixed earth and system of cycles and
epicycles in which the heavenly bodies moved. He
thereby upset very much besides. Like Anaximan-
der and others, Aristotle beheved in spontaneous
generation, although only in the case of certain ani-
mals, as of eels from the mud of ponds, and of insects
from putrid matter. However, in this, both Augus-
tine and Thomas Aquinas, and many men of science
down to the latter part of the seventeenth century,
followed him. For example. Van Helmont, an ex-
perimental chemist of that period, gave a recipe for
making fleas; and another scholar showed himself
on a level with the unlettered rustics of to-day, who
believe that eels are produced from horse hairs
thrown into a pond.

Of deeper interest, as marking Aristotle's pre-

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 2 1

vision, is his anticipation of what is known as Epi-
genesis, or the theory of the development of the
germ into the adult form among the higher indi-
viduals through the union of the fertilizing powers
of the male and female organs. This theory, which
was proved by the researches of Harvey, the dis-
coverer of the circulation of the blood, and is ac-
cepted by all biologists to-day, was opposed by Mal-
pighi, an Itahan physician, born in 1628, the year
in which Harvey published his great discovery, and
by other prominent men of science down to the last
century. Malpighi and his school contended that
the perfect animal is already " preformed " in the
germ; for example, the hen's ^^^, before fecunda-
tion, containing an excessively minute, but com-
plete, chick. It therefore followed that in any germ
the germs of all subsequent offspring must be con-
tained, and in the apphcation of this "box-within-
box " theory its defenders even computed the num-
ber of human germs concentrated in the ovary of
mother Eve, estimating these at two hundred thou-
sand millions!

When the '' preformation " theory was revived by
Bonnet and others in the eighteenth century, Eras-
mus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, passed
the following shrewd criticism on it : '' Many in-
genious philosophers have found so great difHculty
in conceiving the manner of reproduction in animals
that they have supposed all the numerous progeny
to have existed in miniature in the animal originally

22 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

created. This idea, besides its being unsupported
by any analogy we are acquainted with, ascribes a
greater continuity to organized matter than we can
readily admit. These embryons . . . must possess
a greater degree of minuteness than that which was
ascribed to the devils who tempted St. Anthony, of
whom twenty thousand were said to have been able
to dance a saraband on the point of a needle without
the least incommoding each other."

Although no theistic element could be extracted
by the theologians of the early Christian Church
from the systems of Empedocles and Democritus,
thereby securing them a share in the influence exer-
cised by the great Stagirite, they were formative
powers in Greek philosophy, and, moreover, have
'' come by their own " in these latter days. Their
chief representative in what is known as the Post-
Aristotelian period is Epicurus, who was born at
Samos, 342 B. c. As with Zeno, the founder of the
Stoic school, his teaching has been perverted, so
that his name has become loosely identified with
indulgence in gross and sensual living. He saw
in pleasure the highest happiness, and therefore ad-
vocated the pursuit of pleasure to attain happiness,
but he did not thereby mean the pursuit of the un-
worthy. Rather did he counsel the following after
pure, high, and noble aims, whereby alone a man
could have peace of mind. It is not hard to see that
in the minds of men of low ideals the tendency to-
wards passivity which lurked in such teaching would

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

23

aid their sliding into the pursuit of mere animal en-
joyment; hence the gross and limited association of
t^e term Epicurean. Epicurus accepted the theory
of Leucippus, and applied it all round. The faineant
gods, who dwell serenely indifferent to human af-
fairs, and about whom men should therefore have no
dread; all things, whether dead or living, even the
ideas that enter the mind; are alike composed of
atoms. He also accepted the theory broached by
Empedocles as to the survival of fit and capable
forms after life had arrived at these through the
processes of spontaneous generation and the pro-
duction of monstrosities. Adopting the physical
speculations of these forerunners, he made them the
vehicle of didactic and ethical philosophies which in-
spired the production of the wonderful poem of
Lucretius.

Between this great Roman and Epicurus — a pe-
riod of some two centuries — there is no name of suf-
ficient prominence to warrant attention. The decline
of Greece had culminated in her conquest by the
semi-barbarian Mummius, and in her consequent ad-
dition to the provinces of the Roman Empire. What
life lingered in her philosophy within her own bor-
ders expired with the loss of freedom, and the work
done by the Pioneers of Evolution in Greece was to
be resumed elsewhere. In the few years of the pre-
Christian period that remained the teaching of Em-
pedocles, and of Epicurus as the mouthpiece of the
atomic theory, was revived by Lucretius in his De

24 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Rerum Natura. Of that remarkable man but little
is recorded, and the record is untrustworthy. He
was probably born 99 b. c, and died — by his own
hand, Jerome says, but of this there is no proof — in
his forty-fourth year. It is difficult, taking up his
wonderful poem, to resist the temptation to make
copious extracts from it, since, even through the
vehicle of Mr. Munro's exquisite translation, it is
probably little known to the general reader in these
evil days of snippety literature. But the temptation
must be resisted, save in moderate degree.

With the dignity which his high mission inspires,
Lucretius appeals to us in the threefold character of
teacher, reformer, and poet. " First, by reason of
the greatness of my argument, and because I set the
mind free from the close-drawn bonds of supersti-
tion; and next because, on so dark a theme, I com-
pose such lucid verse, touching every point with the
grace of poesy." As a teacher he expounds the doc-
trines of Epicurus concerning life and nature; as a
reformer he attacks superstition; as a poet he in-
forms both the atomic philosophy and its moral ap-
plication with harmonious and beautiful verse swayed
by a fervour that is akin to religious emotion.

Discussing at the outset various theories of ori-
gins, and dismissing these, notably that which asserts
that things came from nothing — " for if so, any kind
might be born of anything, nothing would require
seed," Lucretius proceeds to expound the teaching
of Leucippus and other atomists as to the constitu-

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS,

25

tion of things by particles of matter ruled in their
movements by unvarying laws. This theory he
works all round, explaining the processes by which
the atoms unite to carry on the birth, growth, and
decay of things, the variety of which is due to variety
of form of the atoms and to differences in modes
of their combination; the combinations being deter-
mined by the affinities or properties of the atoms
themselves, " since it is absolutely decreed what each
thing can and what it cannot do by the conditions of
Nature." Change is the law of the universe; what
is, will perish, but only to reappear in another form.
Death is " the only immortal " ; and it is that and
what may follow it which are the chief tormentors
of men. '' This terror of the soul, therefore, and this
darkness, must be dispelled, not by the rays of the
sun or the bright shafts of day, but by the outward
aspect and harmonious plan of Nature." Lucretius
explains that the soul, which he places in the centre
of the breast, is also formed of very minute atoms of
heat, wind, calm air, and a finer essence, the pro-
portions of which determine the character of both
men and animals. It dies with the body, in support
of which statement Lucretius advances seventeen
arguments, so determined is he to " deliver those
who through fear of death are all their lifetime sub-
ject to bondage."

These themes fill the first three books. In the
fourth he grapples with the mental problems of
sensation and conception, and explains the origin of
3

26 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. .

belief in immortality as due to ghosts and appari-
tions which appear in dreams. '' When sleep has
prostrated the body, for no other reason does the
mind's intelligence wake, except because the very
same images provoke our minds which provoke them
when we are awake, and to such a degree that we
seem without a doubt to perceive him whom life has
left, and death and earth gotten hold of. This Na-
ture constrains to come to pass because all the senses
of the body are then hampered and at rest through-
out the limbs, and cannot refute the unreal by real
things."

In the fifth book Lucretius deals with origins —
of the sun, the moon, the earth (which he held to be
flat, denying the existence of the antipodes); of Hfe
and its development; and of civilization. In all this
he excludes design, explaining everything as pro-
duced and maintained by natural agents, "the masses,
suddenly brought together, became the rudiments of
earth, sea, and heaven, and the race of living things."
He believed in the successive appearance of plants
and animals, but in their arising separately and di-
rectly out of the earth, " under the influence of rain
and the heat of the sun," thus repeating the old
speculations of the emergence of life from sHme,
" wherefore the earth with good title has gotten and
keeps the name of mother." He did not adopt Em-
pedocles's theory of the " four roots of all things,"
and he will have none of the monsters — the hippo-
griffs, chimeras, and centaurs — which form a part of

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

27

the scheme of that philosopher. These, he says,
" have never existed," thus showing himself far in
advance of ages when unicorns, dragons, and such-
like fabled beasts were seriously believed to exist.
In one respect, more discerning than Aristotle, he
accepts the doctrine of the survival of the fittest as
taught by the sage of Agrigentum. For he argues
that since upon " the increase of some Nature set a
ban, so that they could not reach the coveted flower
of age, nor find food, nor be united in marriage,"
..." many races of living things have died out, and
been unable to beget and continue their breed."
Lucretius speaks of Empedocles in terms scarcely
less exaggerated than those which he applied to Epi-
curus. The latter is " a god " who first found out
that plan of life which is now termed wisdom, and
who by tried skill rescued life from such great bil-
lows and such thick darkness and moored it in so
perfect a calm and in so brilliant a light, ... he
cleared men's breasts with truth-telling precepts, and
fixed a limit to lust and fear, and explained what
was the chief good which we all strive to reach." As
to Empedocles, " that great country (Sicily) seems
to have held within it nothing more glorious than
this man, nothing more holy, marvellous, and dear.
The verses, too, of this godHke genius cry with a
loud voice, and make known his great discoveries,
so that he seems scarcely born of a mortal stock."
Continuing his speculations on the development
of living things, Lucretius strikes out in bolder and

28 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

original vein. The past history of man, he says, lies
in no heroic or golden age, but in one of struggle
, .^^^>•^^out of savagery. Only when '' children, by their
^ ^ ly J coaxing ways, easily broke down the proud temper
r^i [i^\ of their fathers," did there arise the family ties out
^ '^ > of which the wider social bond has grown, and soft-
y^ ening and civilizing agencies begin their fair offices.

In his battle for food and shelter, " man's first arms
were hands, nails and teeth and stones and boughs
broken off from the forests, and flame and fire, as
soon as they had become known. Afterward the
force of iron and copper was discovered, and the use
of copper was known before that of iron, as its nature
is easier to work, and it is found in greater quantity.
With copper they would labour the soil of the earth
and stir up the billows of war. . . . Then by slow
steps the sword of iron gained ground and the make
of the copper sickle became a byword, and with iron
they began to plough through the earth's soil, and
the struggles of wavering man were rendered equal."
As to language, " Nature impelled them to utter the
various sounds of the tongue, and use struck out the
names of things." Thus does Lucretius point the
road along which physical and mental evolution have
since travelled, and make the whole story subordi-
nate to the high purpose of his poem in deliverance
of the beings whose career he thus traces from super-
stition. Man '' seeing the system of heaven and the
different seasons of the years could not find out by
what causes this was done, and sought refuge in

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS,

29

handing over all things to the gods and supposing
all things to be guided by their nod." Then, in the
sixth and last book, the completion of which would
seem to have been arrested by his death, Lucretius
explains the " law of winds and storms," of earth-
quakes and volcanic outbursts, which men " foolishly
lay to the charge of the gods," who thereby make
known their anger.

So, loath to suffer mute,
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear ;
With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.

And what a motley crowd of gods they were on
whose caprice or indifference he pours his vials of
anger and contempt! The tolerant pantheon of
Rome gave welcome to any foreign deity with re-
spectable credentials; to Cybele, the Great Mother,
imported in the shape of a rough-hewn stone with
pomp and rejoicings from Phrygia 204 b. c; to Isis,
welcomed from Egypt^ to Herakles, Demeter, As-
klepios, and many another god from Greece. But
these were dismissed from a man's thought when the
prayer or sacrifice to them had been offered at the
due season. They had less influence, on the Roman's
life than the crowd of native godlings who were
thinly disguised fetiches, and who controlled every
action of the day. For the minor gods survive the
changes in the pantheon of every race. Of the Greek
peasant of to-day Mr. Rennel Rodd testifies, in his

30

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Custom and Lore of Modern Greece, that much as
he would shudder at the accusation of any taint of
paganism, the ruling of the Fates is more immedi-
ately real to him than divine omnipotence. Mr.
Tozer confirms this in his Highlands of Turkey. He.
says : " It is rather the minor deities and those as-
sociated with man's ordinary life that have escaped
the brunt of the storm, and returned to live in a dim
twilight of popular belief." In India, Sir Alfred
Lyall tells us that, '' even the supreme triad of Hindu
allegory, which represents the almighty powers of
creation, preservation, and destruction, have long
ceased to preside actively over any such correspond-
ing distribution of functions." Like limited mon-
archs, they reign, but do not govern. They are
superseded by the ever-increasing crowd of godlings
whose influence is personal and special, as shown by
Mr. Crooke in his instructive Introduction to the
Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India.
The old Roman catalogue of spiritual beings,
abstractions as they were, who guarded life in minute
detail, is a long one. From the indigitamenta, as
such lists are called, we learn that no less than forty-
three were concerned with the actions of a child.
When the farmer asked Mother Earth for a good
harvest, the prayer would not avail unless he also
invoked " the spirit of breaking up the land and the
spirit of ploughing it crosswise ; the spirit of furrow-
ing and the spirit of ploughing in the seed; and the
spirit of harrowing; the spirit of weeding and the

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

31

spirit of reaping; the spirit of carrying corn to the
barn; and the spirit of bringing it out again." The
country, moreover, swarmed with Chaldsean astrolo-
gers and casters of nativities; with Etruscan harus-
pices full of " childish lightning-lore," who foretold
events from the entrails of sacrificed animals; while
in competition with these there was the State-sup-
ported college of augurs to divine the will of the
gods by the cries and direction of the flight of birds.
Well might the satirist of such a time say that the
" place was so densely populated with gods as to
leave hardly room for the men."

It will be seen that the justification for including
Lucretius among the Pioneers of Evolution lies in
his two signal and momentous contributions to the
science of man; namely, the primitive savagery of
the human race, and the origin of the beHef in a
soul and a future life. Concerning the first, an-
thropological research, in its vast accumulation of
materials during the last sixty years, has done little
more than fill in the outline which the insight of
Lucretius enabled him to sketch. As to the second,
he anticipates, well-nigh in detail, the ghost- theory
of the origin of belief in spirits generally which Her-
bert Spencer and Dr. Tylor, following the Hues laid
down by Hume and Turgot (see p. 255), have
formulated and sustained by an enormous mass of
evidence. The credit thus due to Lucretius for the
original ideas in his majestic poem — Greek in con-
ception and Roman in execution — has been ob-

32

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

scured in the general eclipse which that poem suf-
fered for centuries through its anti-theological spirit.
Grinding at the same philosophical mill, Aristotle,
because of the theism assumed to be involved in his
" perfecting principle," was cited as '' a pillar of the
faith " by the Fathers and Schoolmen ; while Lucre-
tius, because of his denial of design, was ** anathema
maranatha." Only in these days, when the far-reach-
ing effects of the theory of evolution, supported by
observation in every branch of inquiry, are apparent,
are the merits of Lucretius as an original seer, more
than as an expounder of the teachings of Empedocles
and Epicurus, made clear.

Standing well-nigh on the threshold of the Chris-
tian era, we may pause to ask what is the sum of
the speculation into the causes and nature of things
which, begun in Ionia (with impulse more or less
slight from the East, in the sixth century before
Christ), by Thales, ceased, for many centuries, in the
poem of Lucretius, thus covering an active period
of about five hundred years. The caution not to see
in these speculations more than an approximate ap-
proach to modern theories must be kept in mind.

1. There is a primary substance which abides
amidst the general flux of things.

All modern research tends to show that the various
combinations of matter are formed of some prima ma-
teria. But its ultimate nature remains unknown.

2. Out of nothing comes nothing.

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

33

Modern science knows nothing of a beginning, and,
moreover, holds it to be unthinkable. In this it stands
in direct opposition to the theological dogma that God
created the universe out of nothing; a dogma still
accepted by the majority of Protestants and binding on
Roman Catholics. For the doctrine of the Church of
Rome thereon, as expressed in the Canons of the
Vatican Council, is as follows: "If any one confesses
not that the world and all things which are contained
in it, both spiritual and mental, have been, in their
zvhole substance, produced by God out of nothing; or
shall say that God created, not by His free will from
all necessity, but by a necessity equal to the necessity
whereby He loves Himself, or shall deny that the
world was made for the glory of God: let him be
anathema."

3. The primary substance is indestructible.

The modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy
teaches that both matter and motion can neither be cre-
ated nor destroyed.

4. The universe is made up of indivisible particles
called atoms, whose manifold combinations, ruled
by unalterable affinities, result in the variety of
things.

With modifications based on chemical as well as
mechanical changes among the atoms, this theory of
Leucippus and Democritus is confirmed. {But recent
experiments and discoveries show that reconstruction
of chemical theories as. to the properties of the atom may
happen.)

34 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

5. Change is the law of things, and is brought
about by the play of opposing forces.

Modern science explains the changes in phenomena
as due to the antagonism of repelling and attracting
modes of motion; when the latter overcome the former^
eqidlibriiim will be reached, and the present state of
things will come to an end.

6. Water is a necessary condition of Hfe.
Therefore life had its beginnings in water; a theory

wholly indorsed by modern biology.

7. Life arose out of non-living matter.
Although modern biology leaves the origin of life

as an insoluble problem, it supports the theory of
fundamental continuity between the inorganic and the
organic.

8. Plants came before animals: the higher organ-
isms, are of separate sex, and appeared subsequent
to the lower.

Generally confirmed by modern biology, but with
qualification as to the undefined borderland betzveen
the lowest plants and the lowest animals. And, of
course, it recognises a continuity in the order and
succession of life which was not grasped by the Greeks.
Aristotle and others before him believed that some of
the higher forms sprang from slimy matter direct.

9. Adverse conditions cause the extinction of
some organisms, thus leaving room for those better
fitted.

Herein lay the crude germ of the modern doctrine
of the " survival of the fittest."

FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS.

35

10. Man was the last to appear, and his primi-
tive state was one of savagery. His first tools and
weapons were of stone; then, after the discovery of
metals, of copper; and, following that, of iron. His
body and soul are alike compounded of atoms, and
the soul is extinguished at death.

The science of Prehistoric Archceology confirms the
theory of man's slow passage from barbarism to civili-
zation; and the science of Comparative Psychology de-
clares that the evidence of his immortality is neither
stronger nor weaker than the evidence of the immor-
tality of the lower animals.

Such, in very broad outline, is the legacy of sug-
gestive theories bequeathed by the Ionian school and
its successors, theories which fell into the rear when
Athens became a centre of intellectual life in which
discussion passed from the physical to those ethical
problems which lie outside the range of this survey.
Although Aristotle, by his prolonged and careful
observations, forms a conspicuous exception, the
fact abides that insight, rather than experiment, ruled
Greek speculation, the fantastic guesses of parts of
which themselves evidence the survival of the crude
and false ideas about earth and sky long prevailing.
The more wonderful is it, therefore, that so much
therein points the way along which inquiry travelled
after its subsequent long arrest; and the more ap-
parent is it that nothing in science or art, and but
little in theological speculations, at least among us

36

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Westerns, can be understood without reference to
Greece.

Table.

Name.

Thales.

Anaximender.

Anaximenes.
Pythagoras.

Xenophanes.

Heraclitus.

Empedocles.

Anaxagoras.

Leucippus
Democritus.

Aristotle.

Epicurus.
Lucretius.

Miletus
(Ionia).

Satnos (near
the Ionian
coast).

Approxi-
mate date

600

500
500

Speciality.

Cosmological
Theoryasto • ,,. .
the Primary i^W^t^^-
Substance

Colophon

500

(Ionia).

Ephesus

500

(Ionia).

Agrigentum

450

(Sicily).

Clazomenae

450

(Ionia).

Abdera

460

(Thrace).

Stagira

350

(Macedo-

nia).

Samos.

300

Rome.

50

the Bound-
less.
Air.
Numbers :

" a Cosmos built
up of geomet-
rical figures,"
or (Grote, Pla-
to, i, 12) "gen-
erated out of
number."

Founder of the
Eleatic school.

Fire.

Fire, Air, Earth,
and Water :
ruled by Love
and Strife.

Nous.

Formulators of the Atomic

Theory.
Naturalist.

Expounder of the Atomic
Theory and Ethical Philos-
opher.

Interpreter of Epicurus and
Empedocles : the first An-
thropologist.

FART II.

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY.

A. D. 50-A. D. 400.

I. From the Early Christian Feriod to the Time of

Aus'ustine,

*^

" A revealed dogma is always opposed to the free research that may
contradict it. The result of science is not to banish the divine
altogether, but ever to place it at a greater distance from the
M^orld of particular facts in which men once believed they saw
it." — Kenan, Essay on Islamism and Science.

A DETAILED account of the rise and progress of
the Christian religion is not within the scope of this
book. But as that rehgion, more especially in the
elaborated theological form which it ultimately as-
sumed, became the chief barrier to the development
of Greek ideas; except, as has been remarked, in
the degree that these were represented by Aristotle,
and brought into harmony with it; a short survey
of its origin and early stages is necessary to the con-
tinuity of our story.

The history of that great movement is told ac-
cording to the bias of the writers. They explain
its rapid diffusion and its ultimate triumph over
Paganism as due either to its Divine origin and
guidance ; or to the favourable conditions of the time
of its early propagation, and to that wise adaptation
to circumstances which linked its fortunes with those

37

38 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

of the progressive peoples of Western Europe. In
the judgment of every unofficial narrator, this latter
explanation best accords with the facts of history,
and with the natural causes which largely determine
success or failure. The most partisan advocates of
its supernatural, and therefore special, character
have to show reason why the fortunes of the Chris-
tian religion have varied like those of other great
religions, both older and younger than it; why, like
Buddhism, it has been ousted from the country in
which it rose; and why, in competition with Brah-
manism, as Sir Alfred Lyall testifies in his Asiatic
Studies (p. no), and with Mohammedanism in
Africa, it has less success than these in the mission
fields where it comes into rivalry with them. Riven
into wrangling sects from an early period of its his-
tory, it has, while exercising a beneficent influence
in turbulent and lawless ages, brought not '' peace
on earth, but a sword." It has been the cause of un-
dying hate, of bloody wars, and of persecutions be-
tween parties and nations, whose animosity seems
the deeper when stirred by matters which are incapa-
ble of proof. As Montaigne says, " Nothing is so
firmly believed as that which is least known." To
bring the Christian religion, or, rather, its manifold
forms, from the purest spirituaHstic to such degraded
type as exists, for example, in Abyssinia, within the
operation of the law which governs development,
and which, therefore, includes partial and local cor-
ruption; is to make its history as clear as it is pro-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY,

39

foundly instructive; while, to demand for it an ori-
gin and character different in kind from other reli-
gions, is to import confusion into the story of man-
kind, and to raise a swarm of artificial difficulties.
'' If," as John Morley observes in his criticism of
Turgot's dissertation upon The Advantages that
the Establishment of Christianity has conferred upon
the Human Race (Miscell., vol. ii, p. 90), "there
had been in the Christian idea the mysterious self-
sowing quality so constantly claimed for it, how
came it that in the Eastern part of the Empire it was
as powerless for spiritual or moral regeneration as
it was for political health and vitality; while in the
Western part it became the organ of the most im-
portant of all the past transformations of the civilized
world? Is not the difference to be explained by the
difference in the surrounding medium, and what is
the effect of such an explanation upon the super-
natural claims of the Christian idea?" Its inclusion
as one of other modes, varying only in degree, by
which man has progressed from the " ape and tiger "
stage to the highest ideals of the race, makes clear
what concerns us here, namely, its attitude toward
secular knowledge, and the consequent serious ar-
rest of that knowledge. That a religion which its
followers claim to be of supernatural origin, and se-
cured from error by the perpetual guidance of a
Holy Spirit, should have opposed inquiry into mat-
ters the faculty for investigating which -lay within
human power and province; that it should actually

40 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

have put to death those who dared thus to inquire,
and to make known what they had discovered; is a
problem which its advocates may settle among them-
/selves. It is no problem to those who take the op-
posite view.

In outlining the history of Christianity stress will
be here laid only upon those elements which caused
it to be an arresting force in man's intellectual de-
velopment, and, therefore, in his spiritual emanci-
pation from terrors begotten of ignorance. It does
not fall within our survey to speak of that primary
element in it which was before all dogma, and which
may survive when dogma has become only a matter
of antiquarian interest. That element, born of emo-
tion, which, as a crowd of kindred examples show,
incarnates, and then deifies the object of its worship,
was the belief in the manifestation of the divine
through the human Jesus who had borne men's
griefs, carried their sorrows, and offered rest to the
weary and heavy-laden. For no religion — and here
Evolution comes in as witness — can take root which
does not adapt itself to, and answer some need of,
the heart of man. Hence the importance of study
of the history of all religions.

Evolution knows only one heresy — the denial of
continuity. Recognising the present as the outcome
of the past, it searches after origins. It knows that
both that which revolts us in man's spiritual history
has, alike with that which attracts, its place, its neces-
sary place, in the development of ideas, and is, there-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 41

fore, capable of explanation from its roots upward.
For this age is sympathetic, not flippant. It looks
with no favour on criticism that is only destructive,
or on ridicule or ribaldry as modes of attack on
current beliefs. Hence we have the modern science
of comparative theology, with its Hibbert Lectures,
and Gifford Lectures, which are critical and construc-
tive; as opposed to Bampton Lectures, Boyle and
Hulse Lectures, which are apologetic, the speaker
holding an official brief. Of the Boyle Lecturers,
Collings the " Deist " caustically said that nobody
doubted the existence of the Deity till they set to
work to prove it. Religions are no longer treated as
true or false, as inventions of priests or of divine
origin, but as the product of man's intellectual specu-
lations, however crude or coarse; and of his spiritual
needs, no matter in what repulsive form they are sat-
isfied. For " proofs " and " evidences " we have sub-
stituted explanations.

Nevertheless, so strong, often so bitter, are the
feelings aroused over the most temperate discussion
of the origin of Christianity that it remains necessary
to repeat that to explain is not to attack, and that
to narrate is not to apportion blame, for no religion
can do aught than reflect the temper of the age in
which it flourishes.

Let us now summarize certain occurrences which,
although famiHar enough, must be repeated for the
clear understanding of their effects.

Some sixty years after the death of Lucretius

42 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

there happened, in the subsequent behef of milHons
of mankind, an event for which all that had gone
before in the history of this planet is said to have
been a preparation. In the fulness of time the Om-
nipotent maker and ruler of a universe to which
no boundaries can be set by human thought, sent to
this earth-speck no less a person than His Eternal
Son. He was said to have been born, not by the
natural processes of generation, but to have been
incarnated in the womb of a virgin, retaining his
divine nature while subjecting it to human limita-
tions. This he had done that he might, as sinless
man, become an expiatory sacrifice to offended
deity, and to the requirements of divine justice, for
the sins which the human race had committed since
the transgression of Adam and Eve, or which men
yet to be born might commit.

The " miraculous " birth of Jesus took place at
Nazareth in Galilee, in the reign of Caesar Augustus,
about 750 A. u. c, as the Romans reckoned time.
Tradition afterward fixed his birthday on the 25th
December, which, curiously enough, although, per-
haps, explaining the choice, was the day dedicated to
the sun-god Mithra, an Oriental deity to whom altars
had been raised and sacrifices performed, with rites
of baptisms of blood, in hospitable Rome.

Jesus is said to have lived in the obscurity of his
native mountain village till his thirtieth year. Ex-
cept one doubtful story of his going to Jerusalem
with his parents when he was twelve years old, noth-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 43

ing is recorded in the various biographies of him
between his birth and his appearance as a pubUc
teacher. Probably he followed his father's trade as
a carpenter. The event that seems to have called
him from home was the preaching of an enthusi-
astic ascetic named John the Baptist. At his hands
Jesus submitted to the baptismal rite, and then en-
tered on his career, wandering from place to place.
The fragments of his discourses, which have survived
in the short biographies known as the Gospels, show
him to have been gifted with a simple, winning style,
and his sermons, brightened by happy illustration
or striking parable, went home to the hearts of his
hearers. Women, often of the outcast class, were
drawn to him by the sympathy which attracted even
more than his teaching. Among a people to whom
the unvarying order of Nature was an idea wholly
foreign — for Greek speculations had not penetrated
into Palestine — stories of miracle-working fotmd
easy credit, falling in, as they did, with popular be-
lief in the constant intervention of deity. Thus, to
the reports of what Jesus taught were added those
of the wonders which he had wrought, from feeding
thousands of folk with a few loaves of bread to rais-
ing the dead to life. His itinerant mission secured
him a few devoted followers from various towns and
villages, while the effect of success upon himself
was to heighten his own conception of the impor-
tance of his work. The skill of the Romans in fusing
together subject races had failed them in the case of

44 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the Jews, whose behef in their special place in the
world as the " chosen people " never forsook them.
Nor had their misfortunes weakened their belief that
the Messiah predicted by their prophets would ap-
pear to deliver them, and plant their feet on the neck
of the hated conqueror. This hope, as became a
pious Jew, Jesus shared, but it set him brooding
on some nobler, because more spiritual, conception
of it than his fellow-countrymen nurtured. Finally,
it led him to the belief, fostered by the ambition of
his nearer disciples, which was, however, material
in its hopes, that he was the spiritual Messiah. In
that faith he repaired to Jerusalem at the time of
the Passover feast when the city was crowded with
devotees, that he might, before the chief priests and
elders, make his appeal to the nation. According
to the story, his daring in clearing the holy temple
of money-changers and traders led to his appearance
before the Sanhedrin, the highest judicial council;
his plainness of speech raised the fury of the sects;
and when, dreaming of a purer faith, he spoke omi-
nous words about the destruction of the temple, the
charge of blasphemy was laid against him. His guilt
was made clear to his judges when, answering a
question of the high priest, he declared himself to be
the Messiah. This, involving claim to kingship over
the Jews, and therefore rebellion against the Empire,
was made the plea of haling him before the Roman
governor, Pontius Pilate, for trial. Pilate, looking
upon the whole affair as a local emeuie, was disin-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 45

clined to severity, but nothing short of the death of
Jesus as a blasphemer (aUhough his chief offence
appears to have been his disclaimer of earthly sov-
ereignty) would satisfy the angry mob. Amidst their
taunts and jeers he was taken to a place named Cal-
vary, and there put to death by the torturing process
of crucifixion, or, the particular mode not being clear,
of transfixion on a stake.

This tragic event, on which, as is still widely held,
hang the destinies of mankind to the end of time,
attracted no attention outside Judaea. In the
Roman eye, cold, contemptuous, and practical, it was
but the execution of a troublesome fanatic who had
embroiled himself with his fellow-countrymen, and
added the crime of sedition to the folly of blasphemy.
Pilate himself passed on, without more ado, to the
next duty. Tradition, anxious to prove that retri-
bution followed his criminal act, as it was judged in
after-time to be, tells how he flung himself in remorse
from the mountain known as Pilatus, which over-
looks the lake of Lucerne. With truer insight, a
striking modern story, L'Etui de Nacre, by Anatole
France, makes Pilate, on his retirement to Sicily in
old age, thus refer to the incident in conversation
with a Roman friend who had loved a Jewish maiden.

" A few months after I had lost sight of her I heard by
accident that she had joined a small party of men and women
who were following a young Galilean miracle-worker. His
name was Jesus, he came from Nazareth, and he was crucified
for I don't know what crime. Pontius, do you remember this
man } Pontius Pilate knit his brow, and put his hand to his

46 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

forehead like one who is searching his memory ; then after a
few moments of silence: 'Jesus,' murmured he, 'Jesus of
Nazareth. No, I don't remember him.' "

On the third day after his death, Jesus is said to
have risen from the grave, and appeared to a faith-
ful few of his disciples. On the fortieth day after
his resurrection he is said to have ascended to heaven.
Both these statements rest on the authority of the
biographies which were compiled some years after
his death. Jesus wrote nothing himself; therefore
the " brethren," as his intimate followers called one
another, had no other sacred books than those of the
Old Testament. They believed that Jesus was the
Messiah predicted in Daniel and some of the apocry-
phal writings, and they cherished certain " logia " or
sayings of his which formed the basis of the first
three Gospels. The earliest of these, that bearing
the name of Mark, probably took the shape in which
we have it (some spurious verses at the end excepted)
about 70 A. D. The fourth Gospel, which tradition
attributes to John, is generally believed to be half a
century later than Mark. It seems likely that the
importance of collecting the words of Jesus into any
permanent form did not occur to those who had
heard them, because the belief in his speedy return
was all-powerful among them, and their life and at-
titude toward everything was shaped accordingly.

Without sacred books, priesthood, or organiza-
tion, these earliest disciples, whom the fate of their
leader had driven into hiding for a time, gathered

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 47

themselves into groups for communion and worship.
" In the church of Jerusalem," says Selden in his
Table Talk (xiv), " the Christians were but another
sect of Jews that did believe the Messias was come."
From that sacred city there went forth preachers of
this simple doctrine through the lands where Greek-
speaking Jews, known as those of the Dispersion,
had been long settled. These formed a very impor-
tant element in the Roman Empire, being scattered
from Asia Minor to Egypt, and thence in all the
lands washed by the Mediterranean. As their racial
isolation and national hopes made them the least
contented among the subject-peoples, a series of tol-
erant measures securing them certain privileges, sub-
ject to loyal behaviour, had been prudently granted
by their Roman masters. The new teaching spread
from Antioch to Alexandria and Rome. But early
in the onward career of the movement a division
broke out among the immediate disciples of Jesus
which ended in lasting rupture. A distinguished
convert had been won to the faith in the person of
the Apostle Paul. He is the real founder of Chris-
tianity as a more or less systematized creed, and all
the development of dogma which followed are in-
tegral parts of the structure raised by him. He con-
verted it from a local religion into a widespread
faith. This came about, at the start, through his de-
feat of the narrower section headed by Peter, who
would have compelled all non-Jewish converts to
submit to the rite of circumcision.

48

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

The unity of the Empire gave Christianity its
chance. Through the connection of Eurasia from
the Euphrates to the Atlantic by magnificent roads,
communication between peoples followed the lines
of least resistance. Happily for tlfe future of Chris-
tianity, the early missionaries travelled westward,
in the wake of the dispersed Jews, along the Medi-
terranean seaboard, and thus its fortunes became
identified with the civilizing portion of mankind.
Had they travelled eastward, it might have been
blended with Buddhism, or, as its Gnostic phases
show, become merged in Oriental mysticism. The
story of progress ran smoothly till a. d. 64, when we
first hear of the '' Christians " — for by such name
they had become known — in " profane " history, as
it was once oddly called. Tacitus, writing many
years after the event, tells how on the night of the
1 8th July, in the sixty-fourth year of our era, a fierce
fire broke out in Rome, causing the destruction of
magnificent buildings raised by Augustus, and of
priceless works of Greek art. Suspicion fell on
Nero, and he, as has been suggested, was instigated
by his wife Poppaea Sabina, an unscrupulous woman,
and, according to some authorities, a convert to
Judaism, " to put an end to the common talk, by
imputing the fire to others, visiting, with a refine-
ment of punishment, those detestable criminals who
went by the name of Christians. The author of that
denomination was Christus, who had been executed
in the time of Tiberius, by the procurator, Pontius

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. ^g

Pilate." Tacitus goes on to describe Christianity as
" a pestilent superstition," and its adherents as guilty
of " hatred to the human race." The indictment, on
the face of it, seems strange, but it has an explana-
tion, although the Christians were brutally murdered
on the charge of arson, and not of superstition. So
far as religious persecution went, they suffered this
first at the hands of Jews, the Empire intervening to
protect them. Broadly speaking, the Roman note
was toleration. Throughout the Empire religion was
a national affair, because it began and ended with the
preservation of the State. Thereupon it was the bind-
ing duty — religio — of every citizen to pay due honour
to the protecting gods on whose favour the safety of
the State depended. That done, a man might be-
lieve what he chose. Polytheism is, from its nature,
easy-going and tolerant; so long as there was no
open opposition to the authorized public worship,
the worshipper could explain it any way he chose.
In Greece a man " might believe or disbelieve that
the Mysteries taught the doctrine of immortality;
the essential thing was that he should duly sacrifice
his pig." In Rome, that vast Cosmopolis, " the or-
dinary pagan did not care two straws whether his
neighbour worshipped twenty gods or twenty-one."
Why should he care?

Now, against all this, the Christians set their
faces sternly, and the result was to make them re-
garded as anti-patriotic and anti-social. Their suc-
cess among the lower classes had been rapid. Chris-

50 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

tianity levelled all distinctions : it welcomed the mas-
ter and his slave, the outcast and the pure: it treated
woman as the spiritual equal of man: it held out to
each the hope of a future life. Thus far, all was to
the good, although the old Mithraic religion had
done well-nigh as much. But Christianity held aloof
from the common social life, putting itself out of
touch with the manifold activity of Rome. It sought
to apply certain maxims of Jesus literally; it dis-
couraged marriage, it brought disunion into family
life; it counselled avoidance of service in the army
or acceptance of any public office. This general
attitude was wholly due to the belief that with the
return of Jesus, the end of the world was at hand.
For Jesus had foretold his second coming, and the
earliest epistles of the apostles bade the faithful pre-
pare for it. Here there was no continuing city; citi-
zenship was in heaven, for the kingdom of Christ
was not of this world. Therefore to give thought to
the earthly and fleeting was folly and impiety, for
who would care to heap up wealth, to strive for place
or to pursue pleasure, or to search after what men
called " wisdom," when these imperilled the soul,
and blocked the way to heaven?

The prejudice created by this belief, expressed in
such direct action as refusal to worship the guardian
gods and the " genius " of the Emperor, was deep-
ened by ugly, although baseless, rumours as to the
cruel and immoral things done by the Christians at
their secret meetings. And so it came to pass that

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 51

Tacitus Spoke of Christianity in the terms quoted;
that Epictetus and Marcus Aurehus (who refers to
it only once in his Meditations) dismissed it with a
scornful phrase; that the common people called it
atheistic; and that, finally, it became a proscribed
and persecuted religion.

Further than this there is no need to pursue its
career until, with wholly changed fortunes, we meet
it as a tolerated religion under a so-called Christian
Emperor. The object in tracing it thus far is to
indicate how enthusiasts, thus filled with an anti-
worldly spirit, would become and remain an arresting
force against the advance of inquiry and, therefore,
of knowledge; and how, as their religion gathered
power, and itself became worldly in policy, it would
the more strongly assert supremacy over the reason.
For intellectual activity would lead to inquiry into
the claims and authority of the Church, and inquiry,
therefore, was the thing to be proscribed. Then,
too, the committal of the floating biographies of
Jesus to written form, and their grouping, with the
letters of the apostles, into one more or less com-
plete collection, tO' be afterward called the New
Testament (a collection held to embrace, as the
theory of inspiration became formulated, all that it
is needful for man to know), would create a further
barrier against intellectual activity. Then, as Chris-
tianity came into nearer touch with the enfeebled
remnants of Greek philosophy, and with other for-
eign influences shaping its dogmas, discussions about

52

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the person of Christ became active. The simple flu-
ent creed of the early Christians took rigid form in
the subtleties of the Nicene Creed, and as " Very-
God of Very God " the final appeal was, logically, to
the words of Jesus. Hence another barrier against
inquiry.

Conflict has never arisen on the ethical sayings
of Jesus, which, making allowance for the impracti-
cableness of a few, place him high among the sages
of antiquity. Comparing their teaching with his, it
is easy to group together maxims which do not yield
to the more famous examples in the Sermon on the
Mount as guides to conduct, or as inspiration to
high ideals. The '' golden rule " is anticipated by
Plato's " Thou shalt not take that which is mine,
and may I do to others as I would that they should
do to me " (Jowett's translation, v, p. 483). And
it is paralleled by Isocrates, a contemporary of Plato,
in those words spoken by the King Nicocles when
addressing his governors, " You should be to others
what you think I should be to you." But if there was
nothing new in what Jesus taught, there was fresh-
ness in the method. Conflict is waged only over
statements the nature and limits of which might be
expected from the place and age when they were
delivered. They who hold that Jesus was God the
Son Eternal, and therefore incapable of error, may
reconcile, as best they can with this, his beHef in the
mischievous delusions of his time. If they say that
so much of this as may be reported in the records of

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 53

his life are spurious, they throw the whole contents
of the gospels into the melting-pot of criticism.

Taking the narratives as we have them, docu-
ments stamped with the hall-mark of the centuries,
" declaring," as a body of clergymen proclaimed re-
cently, " incontrovertibly the actual historical truth
in all records, both of past events, and of the deliv-
ery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled," we learn
that Jesus accepted the accuracy of the sacred writ-
ings of his people; that he spoke of Moses as the
author of the Pentateuch ; that he referred to its leg-
ends as dealing with historical persons, and as re-
porting actual events. All these beliefs are refuted
by the critical scholarship of to-day. We need not
go to Germany for the verdict; it is indorsed by
eminent Hebraists, officials of the Church of Eng-
land. Canon Driver, Professor of Hebrew at Ox-
ford, says that " like other people, the Jews formed
theories to account for the beginnings of the earth
and man "; that " they either did this for themselves,
or borrowed from their neighbours," and that " of
the theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia frag-
ments have been preserved which exhibit parts of
resemblance to the Bible narratives sufficient to war-
rant the inference that both are derived from the
same cycle of traditions." If, therefore, the cos-
mogonic and other legends are inspired, so must also
the common original of these and their correspond-
ing stories be inspired. The matter might be pur-
sued through the patriarchal age to the eve of the

54 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Exodus, showing that, here also, the mythical ele-
ment is dominant; the existence of Abraham him-
self dissolving in the solution of the '* higher criti-
cism." As to the Pentateuch, the larger number of
scholars place its composition, in the form in which
we have it — older documents being blended therein
— about the sixth and fifth centuries b. c.

Jesus spoke of the earth as if it were flat, and
the most important among the heavenly bodies.
Knowledge of the active speculations that went on
centuries before his time on the Ionian seaboard;
prevision of what secrets men would wrest from the
stars centuries hence — of neither did he dream. That
Homer and Virgil had sung; that Plato had dis-
coursed; that Buddha had founded a religion with
which his, when Western activity met Eastern pas-
sivity, would vainly compete; these, and aught else
that had moved the great world without, were un-
known to the Syrian teacher.

Jesus believed in an arch-fiend, who was per-
mitted by Omnipotence, the Omnipotence against
which he had rebelled, to set loose countless num-
bers of evil spirits to work havoc on men and ani-
mals. Jesus also believed in a hell of eternal tor-
ment for the wicked; and in a heaven of unending
happiness for the good. There is no surer index of
the intellectual stage of any people than the degree
in which belief in the supernatural, and especially
in the activity of supernatural agents, rules their lives.
The lower we descend, the more detailed and famil-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 55

iar is the assumption of knowledge of the behaviour
of these agents, and of the nature of the places they
come from or haunt. Of this, mediaeval speculations
on demonology, and modern books of anthropology,
supply any number of examples. Here we are con-
cerned only with the momentous fact that belief in
demoniacal activity pervades the New Testament
from beginning to end, and, therefore, gave the war-
rant for the unspeakable cruelties with which that
belief has stained the annals of Christendom. John
Wesley was consistent when he wrote that " Giving
up the belief in witchcraft was in effect giving up
the Bible," and it may be added that giving up be-
lief in the devil is giving up belief in the atonement
— the central doctrine of the Christian faith. To this
the early Christians would have subscribed: so, also,
would the great Augustine, who said that " nothing
is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture,
since greater is that authority than all the powers
of the human mind " ; so would all who have followed
him in ancient confessions of the faith. It is only
the amorphous form of that faith which, lingering
on, anaemic and boneless, denies by evasion.

But they who abandon belief in maleficent de-
mons and in witches; as also, for this follows, in be-
neficent agents, as angels; land themselves in serious
dilemma. For to this are such committed. If Jesus,
who came " that he might destroy the works of the
devil," and who is reported, among other proofs of
his divine ministry, to have cast out demons from

56 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

" possessed " human beings, and, in one case, to
have permitted a crowd of the infernal agents to
enter into a herd of swine; if he verily believed that
he actually did these things; and if it be true that the
belief is a superstition limited to the ignorant or
barbaric mind ; what value can he attached to any state-
ment that Jesus is reported to have made about a spiritual
zvorldf

Here then (i) in the attitude of the early Chris-
tians toward all mundane affairs as of no moment
compared with those affecting their souls' salvation;

(2) in the assumed authority of Scripture as a full
revelation of both earthly and heavenly things; and

(3) in the assumed infallibility of the words of Jesus
reported therein; we have three factors which suf-
fice to explain why the great movement toward dis-
covery of the orderly relations of phenomena was
arrested for centuries, and theories of capricious gov-
ernment of the universe sheltered and upheld.

While, as has been said, the unity of the Empire
secured Christianity its fortunate start; the multi-
form elements of which the Empire was made up —
philosophic and pagan — being gradually absorbed
by Christianity, secured it acceptance among the
different subject-peoples. The break up of the Em-
pire secured its supremacy.

The absorption of foreign ideas and practices by
Christianity, largely through the influence of Hel-
lenic Jews, was an added cause of arrest of inquiry.
The adoption of pagan rites and customs, resting,

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, 57

as these did, on a bedrock of barbarism, dragged it
to a lower level. The intrusion of philosophic sub-
tleties led to terms being mistaken for explanations:
as Gibbon says, " the pride of the professors and of
their disciples was satisfied with the science of
words." The inchoate and mobile character of Chris-
tianity during the first three centuries gave both in-
fluences— pagan and philosophic — their opportunity.
For long years the converts scattered throughout the
Empire were linked together, in more or less regular
federation, by the acknowledgment of Christ as Lord,
and by the expectation of his second coming. There
was no official priesthood, only overseers — " epis-
kopoi " — for social purposes, who made no claims
to apostolic succession; no formulated set of doc-
trines; no Apostles' Creed; no dogmas of baptismal
regeneration or of the real presence; no worship or
apotheosis of Mary as the Mother of God; no wor-
ship of saints or relics.

On the philosophic side, it was the Greek influence
in the person of the more educated converts that
shaped the dogmas of the Church and sought to
blend them with the occult and mysterious elements
in Oriental systems, of which modern " Theosophy "
is the tenuous parody. That old Greek habit of ask-
ing questions, of seeking to reach the reason of
things, which, as has been seen, gave the great im-
pulse to scientific inquiry, was as active as ever.
Appeals to the Old Testament touched not the Greek
as they did the Jewish Christian, and the Canon of
5

58

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the New Testament was as yet unsettled. Strange
as it may seem in view of the assumed divine origin
of the Gospels and Epistles, human judgment took
upon itself to decide which of them were, and which
were not, an integral part of supernatural revelation.
The ultimate verdict, so far as the Western Church
was concerned, was delivered by the Council of
Carthage in the early part of the fifth century. There
arose a school of Apologists, founders of theology,
who, to quote Gibbon, " equipped the Christian re-
Hgion for the conquest of the Roman world by
changing it into a philosophy, attested by Revela-
tion. They mingled together the metaphysics of
Platonism, the doctrine of the Logos, which came
from the Stoics, morality partly Platonic, partly
Stoic, methods of argument and interpretation learnt
from Philo, with the pregnant maxims of Jesus and
the religious language of the Christian congrega-
tions." Thus the road was opened for additions to
dogmatic theology, doctrines of the Trinity, of the
Virgin Birth, and whatever else could be inferentially
extracted from the Scriptures, and blended with for-
eign ideas. The growing complexity of creed called
for interpretation of it, and this obviously fell to the
overseers or bishops, chosen for their special gifts
of " the grace of the truth." These met, as occasion
required, to discuss subjects afifecting the faith and
discipline of the several groups. Among such, pre-
cedence, as a matter of course, would be accorded to
the overseer of the most important Christian society

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, jq

in the Empire; and hence the prominence and au-
thority, from an early period, of the bishop of Rome.
In the simple and business-like act of his election as
chairman of the gatherings lay the germ of the au-
dacious and preposterous claims of the Papacy.

On the pagan side, the course of development is
not so easily traced. To determine when and where
this or that custom or rite arose is now impossible;
indeed, we may say, without exaggeration, that it
never arose at all, because the conditions for its
adoption were present throughout in human tend-
encies. The first Christian disciples were Jews: and
the ritual which they followed was the direct outcome
of ideas common to all barbaric religions, so that
certain of tlie pagan rites and ceremonies with which
they came in contact in all parts of the Empire fitted
in with custom, tradition, and desire. And this ap-
plies, with stronger force, to the converts scattered
from Edessa, east of the Euphrates, to the Empire's
westernmost limits in Britain. Moreover, we know
that a policy of adaptation and conciliation wisely
governed the ruling minds of the Church, in whom,
stripped of all the verbiage about them as semi-
inspired successors of the apostles, there was deep-
seated superstition. Paganism might, in its turn, be
suppressed by Imperial edict, but it had too much
in common with the later forms of Christianity not
to survive in fact, however changed in name.

It may be taken as a truism that in the cere-
monies of the higher religions there are no inven-

6o PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

tions, only survivals. This fact sent thinkers like
Hobbes, and dealers in literary antiquities of the type
of Burton, Bishop Newton, and, notablest of all,
Conyers Middleton, on the search after parallels,
which have received astonishing confirmation in our
day. Burton sees the mimicry of the " arch-deceiver
in the strange sacraments, the priests, and the sacri-
fices," as the Romanist missionaries to Tibet saw
the same diabolical parody of their rites in Buddhist
temples. But Hobbes, with the sagacity which might
be expected of him, recognises the continuity of
ideas: " imitato nomine tantum; Venus and Cupid
(Hobbes might have added Isis and Horus) appear-
ing as * the Virgin Mary and her Sonne,' and the
ATToOeoio-LS of the Heathen surviving in the Canon-
ization of Saints. The carrying of the Popes ' by
Switzers under a Canopie ' is a ' Rehque of the Di-
vine Honours given to Caesar'; the carriage of
Images in Procession ' a Relique of the Greeks and
Romans.' . . . ' The Heathen had also their Aqua
Lustralis, that is to say. Holy Water. The Church
of Rome imitates them also in their Holy Dayes.
They had their Bacchanalia, and we have our Wakes
answering to them; They their Saturnalia, and we
our Carnevalls and Shrove-tuesdays liberty of Serv-
ants; They their Procession of Priapus, we our
fetching-in, erection, and dancing about May-Poles;
and Dancing is one kind of worship; They had their
Procession called Ambarvalia, and we our Procession
about the Fields in the Rogation week' "

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, 6 1

Middleton examined the matter on the spot, and
in his celebrated Letter from Rome gives numerous
examples of "an exact Conformity between Popery
and Paganism." Since few read his book now-a-
days, some of these may be cited, because their pres-
ence goes far to explain why the conglomerate re-
ligion which Christianity had become was proof
against ideas spurned alike by pagans and ecclesias-
tics. Visiting the place for classical study, and " not
to notice the fopperies and ridiculous ceremonies of
the present Religion," Middleton soon found himself
" still in old Heathen Rome," with its rituals of primi-
tive Paganism, as if handed down by an uninter-
rupted succession from the priests of old to the
priests of new Rome. The *' smoak of the incense "
in the churches transports him to the temple of the
Paphian Venus described by Virgil (^neid, I, 420) ;
the surpliced boy waiting on the priest with the thuri-
ble reminds him of sculptures on ancient bas-reliefs
representing heathen sacrifice, with a white-clad at-
tendant on a priest holding a little chest or box in
his hand. The use of holy water suggests numer-
ous parallels. At the entrance to Pagan temples
stood vases of holy liquid, a mixture of salt and
common water; and, on bas-reliefs, the aspergillum
or brush for the ceremony of sprinkling is carved.
In the annual festival of the benediction of horses,
when the animals were sent to the convent of St.
Anthony to be sprinkled (Middleton had his own
horses thus blest '' for about eighteenpence of our

62 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

money ") there is the survival of a ceremony in the
Circensian games. In the lamps and wax candles
before the shrines of the Madonna and Saints he is
reminded of a passage in Herodotus as to the use of
lights in the Egyptian temples, while we know that
lamps to the Madonna took the place of those before
the images of the Lares, whose chapels stood at the
corners of the streets. The Synod of Elviri (305 a. d.)
forbade the lighting of wax candles during the day
in cemeteries lest the spirits of the saints should be
disquieted, but the custom was too deeply rooted
to be abolished. As for votive offerings, Middleton
truly says that *' no one custom of antiquity is so fre-
quently mentioned by all their writers " . . . " but
the most common of all offerings were pictures repre-
senting the history of the miraculous cure or deliv-
erance vouchsafed upon the vow of the donor." Of
which offerings, the blessed Virgin is so sure always
to carry off the greatest share, that it may be truly
said of her what Juvenal says of the Goddess Isis,
whose rehgion was at that time in the greatest vogue in
Rome, that the painters got their livelihood out of her!'
Middleton tells the story from Cicero which, not
without covert sympathy, Montaigne quotes in his
Essay on Prognostications. Diagoras, surnamed
the Atheist, being found one day in a temple, was
thus addressed by a friend : " You, who think the
gods take no care of human affairs, do not you see
here by this number of pictures how many people,
for the sake of their vows, have been saved in

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 63

storms at sea, and got safe into harbour? " '' Yes,"
answered Diagoras, '* I see how it is; for those are
never painted who happen to be drowned." There
is nothing new under the sun. Horace (Odes, Bk.
I, v) tells of the shipwrecked sailor who hung up
his clothes as a thank-ofifering in the temple of the
sea-god who had preserved him; Polydorus Ver-
gilius, who lived in the early part of the sixteenth
century, that is, some 1,500 years after Horace, de-
scribes the classic custom of ex voto offerings at
length, while Pennant the antiquary, describing the
well of Saint Winifred in Flintshire in the last cen-
tury, tells of the votive ofiferings, in the shape of
crutches and other objects, which were hung about
it. To this day the store is receiving additions. The
sick crowd thither as of old they crowded into the
temples of ^sculapius and Serapis; mothers bring
their sick children as in Imperial Rome they took
them to the Temple of Romulus and Remus. A
draught of water from the basin near the bath, or
a plunge in the bath itself, is followed by prayers at
the altar of the chapel which incloses the well. When
the saint's feast-day is held, the afHicted gather to
kiss the reliquary that holds her bones. Perhaps
one of the most pathetic sights in Catholic churches,
especially in out-of-the-way villages, is the altars on
which are hung votive offerings, rude daubs depict-
ing the disease or danger from which the worshipper
has been delivered.

As to the images, tricked out in curious robes

64 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

and gewgaws, Middleton " could not help recollect-
ing the picture which old Homer draws of Q. Hecuba
of Troy, prostrating herself before the miraculous
Image of Pallas,'' while his wonder at the Loretto
image of the '' Queen of Heaven " with " a face as
black as a Negus " reminds him of the reference in
Baruch to the idols black with the " perpetual smoak
of lamps and incense." In his Hibbert Lectures Pro-
fessor Rhys refers to churches dedicated to Notre
Dame in virtue of legends of discovery of images of
the Virgin on the spot. These were usually of wood,
which had turned black in the soil. Such a black
" Madonna " was found near Grenoble, in the com-
mune of La Zouche. Then, in the titles of the new
deities, Middleton correctly sees those of the old.
The Queen of Heaven reminds him of Astarte or
Myhtta; the Divine Mother of the Magna Mater,
the " great mother " of Oriental cults. In other at-
tributes of Mary, lineal descendant of Isis, there sur-
vive those of Venus, Lucina, Cybele, or Maria. He
gives amusing examples of myths and misreadings
through which certain " saints " have a place in the
Roman Calendar. He apparently knew nothing of the
strange confusion by which Buddha appears therein
under the title of Saint Josaphat; but he tells how, by
misinterpretation of a boundary stone, ProefectusVia-
rum, an overseer of highways, became S. Viar; how
S. Veronica secured canonization through a blunder
over the words Vera Icon : still more droll, how hagi-
ology includes both a mountain and a mantle!

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, 65

The marks of hands or feet on rocks, said to be
made by the apparition of some saint or angel, call
to mind " the impression of Hercules' feet on a stone
in Scythia"; the picture of the Virgin, which came
from heaven, suggests the descent of Numa's shield
" from the clouds " ; that of the weeping Madonna
the statue of Apollo, which Livy says wept for three
successive days and nights; while the periodical
miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Janu-
arius is obviously paralleled in the incidents named
by Horace on his journey to Brundusium, when the
priests of the temple at Gnatia sought to persuade
him that " the frankincense used to dissolve and melt
miraculously without the help of fire " (Sat., v, 97-
100).

Middleton, and those of his school, thought that
they were near primary formations when they struck
on these suggestive classic or pagan parallels to
Christian belief and custom. But in truth they had
probed a comparatively recent layer; since, far be-
neath, lay the unsuspected prehistoric deposits of
barbaric ideas which are coincident with, and com-
posed of, man's earliest speculations about himself
and his surroundings. When, however, we borrow
an illustration from geology, it must be remembered
that our divisions, like those into which the strata of
the globe are separated, are artificial. There is no
real detachment. The difference between former and
present methods of research is that nowadays we
have gone further down for discovery of the common

66 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

materials of which barbaric, pagan, and civilized
ideas are compounded. They arise in the comparison
which exists in the savage mind between the living
and the non-living, and in the attribution of like
qualities to things superficially resembling one an-
other; hence beHef in their efficacy, which takes
active form in what may be generally termed magic.
For example, the rite of baptism is explained when
we connect it with barbaric lustrations and water-
worship generally; as also that of the Eucharist by
reference to sacrificial feasts in honour of the gods;
feasts at which they were held to be both the eaters
and the eaten. Middleton, himself a clergyman,
shows perplexity when watching the elevation of the
host at mass. He lacked that knowledge of the
origin of sacramental rites which study of barbaric
customs has since supplied. In Mr. Frazer's Golden
Bough, the " central idea " of which is " the concep-
tion of the slain god," he shows at what an early
stage in his speculations man formulated the concep-
tion of deity incarnated in himself, or in plant or ani-
mal, and as afterward slain, both the incarnation and
the death being for the benefit of mankind. The
god is his own sacrifice, and in perhaps the most
striking form, as insisted upon by Mr. Frazer, he is,
as corn-spirit, killed in the person of his representa-
tive; the passage in this mode of incarnation to the
custom of eating bread sacramentally being obvious.
The fundamental idea of this sacramental act, as
the mass of examples collected by Mr. Frazer fur-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 6/

ther goes to show, is that by eating a thing its physi-
cal and mental qualities are acquired. So the bar-
baric mind reasons, and extends the notion to all
beings. To quote Mr. Frazer: " By eating the body
of the god he shares in the god's attributes and pow-
ers. And when the god is a corn-god, the corn is
his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice
of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread
and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of
the real body and blood of his god. Thus the drink-
ing of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is
not an act of revelry; it is a solemn sacrament."
It is, perhaps, needless to point out that the same
explanation applies to the rites attaching to Denie-
ter, or to add what further parallels are suggested
in the belief that Dionysus was slain, rose again, and
descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele
from the dead. This, however, by the way. What
has to be emphasized is, that in the quotation just
given we have transubstantiation clearly anticipated
as the barbaric idea of eating the god. In proof of
the underlying continuity of that idea two witnesses
— Catholic and Protestant — may be cited.

The Church of Rome, and in this the Greek
Church is at one therewith, thus defines the term
transubstantiation in the Canon of the Council of
Trent :

" If any one shall say that in the most holy sacrament of
the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine
together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,

68 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

and shall deny that wonderful and singular conversion of the
whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole
substance of the wine into the blood, the species of bread and
wine alone remaining — which conversion the Catholic Church
most fittingly calls Transubstantiation — let him be anathema."

The Church of England, through the medium of
a letter to a well-known newspaper, the British
Weekly (29th August, 1895), supplies the following
illustration of the position of its " High " section,
and this, it is interesting to note, from the church
of which Mr. Gladstone's son is rector, and in which
the distinguished statesman himself often reads the
lessons:

" A few Sundays ago — 8 o'clock celebration of Holy Com-
munion. Rector, officiating minister (Hawarden Church).

" When the point was reached for the communicants to
partake, cards containing a hymn to be sung after Communion
were distributed among the congregation. This hymn opened
with the following couplet : —

Jesu, mighty Saviour,
Thou art in us now.

And my attention was arrested by an asterisk referring to a
footnote. The word ' in,' in the second line, was printed in
italics, and the note intimated that those who had not commu-
nicated should sing \with ' instead of 'in' i.e. those who had
taken the consecrated elements to sing ' Thou art in us now,'
and those who had not, to sing * Thou art with us now.' "

Whether, therefore, the cult be barbaric or civi-
lized, we find theory and practice identical. The god
is eaten so that the communicant thereby becomes
a " partaker of the divine nature."

In the gestures denoting sacerdotal benediction we

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. go

have probably an old form of averting the evil eye;
in the act of breathing on a bishop at the service of
consecration there was the survival of belief in trans-
ference of spiritual qualities, the soul being, as lan-
guage evidences, well-nigh universally identified with
breath. The modern spiritualist who describes ap-
paritions as having the " consistency of cigar-smoke,"
is one with the Congo negroes who leave the house
of the dead unswept for a time lest the dust should
injure the delicate substance of the ghost. The in-
haling of the last breath of the dying Roman by his
nearest kinsman has parallel in the breathing of the
risen Jesus on his disciples that they might receive the
Holy Ghost (John xx, 22). In the offering of prayers
for the dead; in the canonization and intercession of
saints; in the prayers and offerings at the shrines of
the Virgin 2ind saints, and at the graves of martyrs;
there are the manifold forms of that great cult of the
departed which is found throughout the world. To
this may be linked the belief in angels, whether good
or bad, or guardian, because the element common
to the whole is animistic, the peopling of the heavens
above, as well as the earth beneath, with an innumer-
able company of spiritual beings influencing the des-
tinies of men. Well might Jews and Moslems re-
proach the Christians, as they did down to the eighth
century, with having filled the world with more gods
than they had overthrown in the pagan temples;
while we have Erasmus, in his Encomium Moriae,
when reciting the names and functions of saints, add-

70 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

ing that '' as many things as we wish, so many gods
have we made." Closely related to this group of
beliefs is the adoration of relics^ the vitality of which
has springs too deep in human nature to be wholly
abolished, whether we carry about us a lock from
the hair of some dead loved one, or read of the frag-
ments of saints or martyrs which lie beneath every
Catholic altar, or of the skull-bones of his ancestor
which the savage carries about with him as a charm.
Then there is the long list of church festivals, the
reference of which to pagan prototypes is but^ one
step toward their ultimate explanation in nature-
worship; there are the processions which are the suc-
cessors of Corybantic frenzies, and, more remotely,
of savage dances and other forms of excitation;
there is that now somewhat casual belief in the
Second Advent which is a member of the widespread
group wherein human hopes fix eyes on the return
of long-sleeping heroes ; of Arthur and Olger Dansk,
of Vainamoinen and Quetzalcoatl, of Charlemagne
and Barbarossa, of the lost Marko of Servia and the
lost King Sebastian. We speak of it as " casual,"
because among the two hundred and eighty-odd sects
scheduled in Whitaker's Almanack the curious in
such inquiries will note only three distinctive bodies
of Adventists.

All changes in popular behef have been, and,
practically, remain superficial; the old animism per-
vades the higher creeds. In our own island, for ex-
ample, the Celtic and pre-Celtic paganism remained

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, 71

unleavened by the old Roman religion. The legions
took back to Rome the gods which they brought with
them. The names of Mithra and Serapis occur on
numerous tablets, the worship of the one — that " Sol
invictus " whose birthday at the winter solstice be-
came (see p. 42) the anniversary of the birth of
Christ — had ranged as far west as South Wales and
Northumberland; while the foundations of a temple
to the other have been unearthed at York. The chief
Celtic gods, in virtue of common attributes as ele-
mental nature-deities, were identified with certain
dii majores of the Roman pantheon, and the deae
niatres equated with the gracious or malevolent spirits
of the indigenous faith. But the old names were not
displaced. Neither did the earlier Christian mission-
aries effect any organic change in popular beliefs,
while, during the submergence of Christianity under
waves of barbaric invasion, there were infused into
the old religion kindred elements from oversea which
gave it yet more vigorous life. The eagle penetra-
tion of Gibbon detected this persistent element at
work when he described the sequel to the futile ef-
forts of Theodosius to extirpate paganism. The an-
cestor worship which lay at the core of much of it took
shape among the Christianized pagans in the wor-
ship of martyrs and in the scramble after their relics.
The bodies of prophets and apostles were discovered
by the strangest coincidences, and transported to the
churches by the Tiber and the Bosphorus, and al-
though the supply of these more important remains

72

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

was soon exhausted, there was no limit to the pro-
duction of rehcs of their person or belongings, as
of filings from the chains of S. Peter, and from the
gridiron of S. Lawrence. The catacombs yielded
any number of the bodies of martyrs, and Rome be-
came a huge manufactory to meet the demands for
wonder-working relics from every part of Christen-
dom. A sceptical feeling might be aroused at the
claims of a dozen abbeys to possession of the verita-
ble crown of thorns wherewith the majesty of the
suffering Christ was mocked, but it was silenced be-
fore the numerous fragments of his cross, since in-
genuity has computed that this must have contained
at least one hundred and eighty million cubic mille-
metres, whereas the total cubic volume of all the
known rehcs is but five millions. " It must," re-
marks Gibbon (Decline and Fall, end of chap, xxviii),
" ingeniously be confessed that the ministers of the
Catholic Church imitated the profane model which
they were impotent to destroy. The most respecta-
ble bishops had persuaded themselves that the ig^
norant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the
superstitions of paganism if they found some resem-
blance, some compensation, in the bosom of Chris-
tianity. The religion of Constantine achieved, in less
than a century, the final conquest of the Roman Em-
pire, but the victors themselves were insensibly sub-
dued by the arts of their vanquished rivals."

Enough has been said on a topic to which promi-
nence has been given because it brings into fuller

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, y^

relief the fact that in a rehgion for which its apolo-
gists claim divine origin and guidance " to the end of
the world " we have the same intrusion of the rites
and customs of lower cults which marks other ad-
vanced faiths. Hence, science and superstition being
deadly foes, the explanation of that hostile attitude
toward inquiry and that dread of its results which
marked Christianity down to modem times. While
the intrusion of corrupting elements presents diffi-
culties which the theory of the supernatural history
of Christianity alone creates, it accords with all that
might be predicted of a religion whose success was
due to its early escape from the narrow confines of
Judaism; and to its fortunate contact with the enter-
prising peoples to whom the civilization of Europe
and the New World is due.

2, Frojn Augustine to Lord Bacon.
A. D. 400-A. D. 1600.

The foregoing slight outline of the causes which
operated for centuries against the freedom of the
human mind will render it needless to follow the
history of the development of Christian polity and
dogma — the temporalizing of the one, and the crys-
tallizing of the other. Yet one prominent actor in
that history demands a brief notice, because of the
influence which his teaching wielded from the fifth
to the fifteenth centuries. The annals of the churches
in Africa, along whose northern shores Christianity
had spread early and rapidly, yield notable names,

74 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

but none so distinguished as that of Augustine,
Bishop of Hippo from 395 to 430 a. d. This greatest
of the Fathers of the Church sought, as has been
remarked already, to bring the system of Aristotle,
the greatest of ancient naturalists, into line with
Christian theology. His range of study was well-
nigh as wide as that of the famous Stagirite, but
we are here concerned only with so much of it as
bears on an attempt to graft the development theory
on the dogma of special creation, Augustine, ac-
cepting the Old Testament cosmogony as a revela-
tion, believed that the world was created out of noth-
ing, but, this initial paradox accepted, he argued
that God had endowed matter with certain powers
of self-development which left free the operation of
natural causes in the production of plants and ani-
mals. With this, however, as already noted, he held,
with preceding philosophers and with his fellow-
theologians, the doctrine of spontaneous generation.
It explained to him the existence of apparently pur-
poseless creatures, as flies, frogs, mice, etc. " Cer-
tain very small animals," he says, " may not have
been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may
have originated later from putrefying matter." Not
till the seventeenth century did the experiments of
Redi refute a doctrine which had held part of the
biological field for above two thousand years, and
which still has adherents. Of course Augustine, as
do modern CathoHc biologists, excepted man from
the operation of secondary causes, and held that his

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. yt

soul was created by the direct intervention of the
Creator. Augustine's concessions are, therefore,
more seeming than real, and, moreover, we find him
denying the existence of the antipodes on the ground
that Scripture is silent about them, and also, that if
God had placed any races there, they could not see
Christ descending at his second coming. To Augus-
tine the air was full of devils who are the cause of
" all diseases of Christians." In other words, he was
not ahead of the illusions of his age. Then, too,
he shows that allegorizing spirit which was manifest
in Greece a thousand years earlier; the spirit which
reads hidden meanings in Homer, in Horace, and in
Omar Khayyam; and which, in the hands of present-
day Gnostics, mostly fantastic or illiterate cabalists,
converts the plain narratives of Old and New Testa-
ments into vehicles of mysterious types and esoteric
symbols. It is in such allegorical vein that Augus-
tine explains the outside and inside pitching of the
ark as typifying the safety of the Church from the
leaking-in of heresy; while the ghastly application
of symbolical exegetics is seen in his citation of the
words of Jesus, " Compel them to come in," as a Di-
vine warrant for the slaughter of heretics.

We shall meet with no other such commanding
figure in Church history till nine hundred years have
passed, when Thomas Aquinas, the " Angel of the
Schools," appears, but although that period marks
no advance of the Church from her central position,
it witnessed changes in her fortune through the in-

76

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

trusion of a strange people into her territory and
sanctuaries.

Perhaps there are few events in history more
impressive than the conversion of the wild and ig-
norant Arab tribes of the seventh century from stone-
worship to monotheism. The series of conquests
which followed had also, as an indirect and unfore-
seen result, effects of vast importance in the revival
and spread of Greek culture from the Tigris to the
Guadalquivir. It is not easy, neither does the in-
quiry fall within our present purpose, to discover the
special impulses which led Mohammed, the leader
of the movement, to preach a new faith whose one
creed, stripped of all subtleties, was the unity of God.
Large numbers of Jews and Christians had settled
in Arabia long before his time, and he had become
acquainted with the narrowness of the one, and with
the causes of the wranglings of the other, riven, as
these last-named were, into sects quarrelling over
the nature of the Person of Christ. These, and the
fetichism of his fellow-countrymen, may, perhaps,
have impelled him to start a crusade the mandate
for which he, in fanatic impulse, believed came from
heaven. The result is well known. The hitherto
untamed nomads became the eager instruments of
the prophet. Under his leadership, and that of the
able Khalifs who succeeded him, the flag of Islam
was carried from East to West, till within one hun-
dred years of the flight of Mohammed from Mecca

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 'j^j

(622 A. D.) it waved from the Indian Ocean to the
iVtlantic. With the conquest of Syria there was
achieved one of the greatest and most momentous of
triumphs in the capture of Jerusalem, and the seiz-
ure of sites sanctified to Christians by association
with the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Only a few years before (614 a. d.), the holy city had
been taken by Chosroes; the sacred buildings raised
over the venerated tomb had been burned, and the
cross — a spurious relic — carried off by the Persian
king. These places have been, as it were, the cockpit
of Christendom from the time of the siege of Jeru-
salem under Titus to that of the Crimean war, when
blood was spilt like water in a conflict stirred by
squabbles between Latin and Greek Christians over
possession of the key of the Church of the Nativity
at Bethlehem. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
these sectaries are still kept from flying at one an-
other's throats by the muskets of Mohammedan sol-
diers.

The Arabian conquest of Persia followed that of
Syria. The turn of Egypt soon came, the city of
Alexandria being taken in 640, seven years after
the prophets' death. Since the loss of Greek free-
dom, and the decay of intellectual Hfe at Athens,
that renowned place had become, notably under the
Ptolemies, the chief home of science and philosophy.
Through the propagandism of Christianity among
the Hellenized Jews, of whom, as of Greeks, large
numbers had settled there, it was also the birthplace

78 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

of dogmatic theology, and, therefore, the fountain
whence welled the controversies whose logomachies
were the gossip of the streets of Constantinople and
the cause of bloody persecution. After a few years'
pause, the Saracens (Ar., sharkiin, orientals) resumed
their conquering march. They captured and burnt
Carthage, another famous centre of Christianity, and
then crossed over to Spain. In " the fair and fertile
isle of Andalusia " the Gothic king Roderick was
aroused from his luxurious life in Toledo to lead his
army in gallant, but vain, attempt to repel the in-
fidel invaders. So rapid was their advance that in
six years they had subdued the whole of Spain, the
north and northwestern portions excepted, for the
hardy Basque mountaineers maintained their inde-
pendence against the Arabs, as they had maintained
it against Celt, Roman, and Goth. Only before the
walls of Tours did the invaders meet with a rebuff
from Charles Martel and his Franks, which arrested
their advance in Western Europe; as, in a more mo-
mentous defeat before Constantinople by Leo III.
in 718, fourteen years earlier, the torrent of Moham-
medan conquest was first checked.

Enough, however, of Saracenic wars and their
destructive work, which, if tradition Hes not, in-
cluded the burning of the remnants of the vast
Alexandrian library. " A revealed dogma is always
opposed to the free research that may contradict it,"
and Islam has ever been a worse foe to science than
Christianity. Its association, as a religion, with the

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, yg

renaissance of knowledge, was as wholly accidental
as the story of it is interesting.

Under the Sassanian kings, Persia had become an
active centre of intellectual life, reaching the climax
of its Augustan age in the reign of Chosroes. Jew,
Greek, and Christian alike had welcome at his court,
and translations of the writings of the Indian sages
completed the eclecticism of that enlightened mon-
arch. Then came the ruthless Arab, and philosophy
and science were eclipsed. But with the advent of
the Abbaside Khalifs, who number the famous
Haroun al-Raschid among them, there came revival
of the widest toleration, and consequent return of
intellectual activity. Baghdad arose as the seat of
empire. Situated on the high road of Oriental com-
merce, along which travelled foreign ideas and for-
eign culture, that city became also the Oxford of her
time. Arabic was the language of the conquerors,
and into that poetic, but unphilosophic, tongue,
Greek philosophy and science were rendered. Under
the rule of those Khalifs, says Renan, " nontolerant,
nonreluctant persecutors," free thought developed;
the Motecallenim or " disputants " held debates, where
all religions were examined in the light of reason.
Aristotle, EucHd, Galen, and Ptolemy were text-
books in the colleges, the repute of whose teachers
brought to Baghdad and Naishapur (dear to lovers
of " old " Khayyam) students westward from Spain,
and eastward from Transoxiana.

"Arab" philosophy, therefore, is only a name.

8o PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

It has been well described as " a system of Greek
thought expressed in a Semitic tongue; and modified
by Oriental influences called into existence by the
patronage of the more liberal princes, and kept alive
by the zeal of a small band of thinkers." In the
main, it began and ended with the study of Aristotle,
commentaries on whom became the chief work of
scholars, at whose head stands the great name of
Averroes. Through these — a handful of Jews and
Moslems — knowledge of Greek science, of astrono-
my, algebra, chemistry, and medicine, was carried
into Western Europe. By the latter half of the tenth
century, one hundred and fifty years after the trans-
lation of Aristotle into Arabic, Spain had become
no mean rival of Baghdad and Cairo. Schools were
founded; colleges to which the Girton girls of the
period could repair to learn mathematics and history
were set up by lady principals; manufactures and
agriculture were encouraged; and lovely and stately
palaces and mosques beautified Seville, Cordova, To-
ledo, and Granada, which last-named city the far-
famed Alhamra or Red Fortress still overlooks.
Seven hundred years before there was a public lamp
in London, and when Paris was a town of swampy
roadways bordered by windowless dwellings, Cor-
dova had miles of well-lighted, well-paved streets;
and the constant use of the bath by the " infidel "
contrasted with the saintly filth and rags which were
the pride of flesh-mortifying devotees and the out-
ward and odorous signs of their religion. The pages

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, gl

of our dictionaries evidence in familiar mathematical
and chemical terms; in the names of the principal
''fixed" stars; and in the words "admiral" and
" chemise "; the influence of the " Arab" in science,
war, and dress.

It forms no part of our story to tell how feuds
between rival dynasties and rival sects of Islam,
becoming more acute as time went on, enabled Chris-
tianity to recover lost ground, and, in the capture
of Granada in 1492, to put an end to Moorish rule
in Spain. Before that event, a knowledge of Greek
philosophy had been diffused through Christendom
by the translation of the works of Avicenna, Aver-
roes, and other scholars, into Latin. That was about
the middle of the twelfth century, when Aristotle,
who had been translated into Arabic some three cen-
turies earlier, also appeared in Latin dress. The
detachment of any branch of knowledge from the-
ology being a thing undreamed of, the deep rever-
ence in which the Stagirite was held by his Arabian
commentators ultimately led to his becoming " sus-
pect " by the Christians, since that which approved
itself to the followers of Mohammed must, ipso facto,
be condemned by the followers of Jesus. Hence
came reaction, and recourse to the Scriptures as sole
guide to secular as well as sacred knowledge; re-
course to a method which, as Hallam says, " had not
untied a single knot, or added one unequivocal truth
to the domain of philosophy."

So far as the scanty records tell (for we may

82 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

never know how much was suppressed, or fell into
oblivion, under ecclesiastical frowns and threats;
nor how many thinkers toiled in secret and in dread),
none seemed possessed either of courage or desire to
supplement the revealed word by examination into
things themselves. To supplant it was not dreamed
of. But, in the middle of the thirteenth century, one
notable exception occurred in the person of Roger
Bacon, sometimes called Friar Bacon in virtue of
his belonging to the order of Franciscans. He was
born in 1214 at Ilchester, in Somerset, whence he
afterward removed to Oxford, and thence to Paris.
That this remarkable and many-sided man, classic
and Arabic scholar, mathematician, and natural phi-
losopher, has not a more recognised place in the an-
nals of science is strange, although it is, perhaps,
partly explained by the fact that his writings were
not reissued for more than three centuries after his
death. He has been credited with a number of in-
ventions, his title to which is however doubtful, al-
though the doubt in nowise impairs the greatness
of his name. He shared the current beHef in al-
chemy, but made a number of experiments in chem-
istry pointing to his knowledge of the properties of
the various gases, and of the components of gun-
powder. If he did not invent spectacles, or the
microscope and telescope, he was skilled in optics,
and knew the principles on which those instruments
are made, as the following extract from his Opus
Majus shows: "We can place transparent bodies

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 83

in such a form and position between our eyes and
other objects that the rays shall be refracted and
bent toward any place we please, so that we shall
see the object near at hand, or at a distance, under
any angle we please; and thus from an incredible
distance we may read the smallest letters, and may
number the smallest particles of sand, by reason of
the greatness of the angle under which they appear."
He knew the " wisdom of the ancients " in the cata-
loguing of the stars, and suggested a reform of the
calendar — following the then unknown poet-astrono-
mer of Naishapur. But he believed in astrology, that
bastard science which from remotest times had ruled
the life of man, and which has no small number of
votaries among ourselves to this day. Roger Bacon's
abiding title to fame rests, however, on his insistence
on the necessity of experiment, and his enforcement
of this precept by practice. As a mathematician he
laid stress on the application of this " first of all the
sciences"; indeed, as "preceding all others, and as
disposing us to them." His experiments, both from
their nature and the seclusion in which they were
made, laid him open to the charge of black magic,
in other words, of being in league with the devil.
This, in the hands of a theology thus " possessed,"
became an instrument of awful torture to mankind.
Roger Bacon's denial of magic only aggravated his
crime, since in ecclesiastical ears, this was tanta-
mount to a denial of the activity, nay more, of the
very existence of Satan. So, despite certain encour-

84 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

agement in his scientific work from an old friend who
afterward became Pope Clement IV., for whose in-
formation he wrote his Opus Majus, he was, on the
death of that potentate, thrown into prison, whence
tradition says he emerged, after ten years, only to
die.

The theories of mediaeval schoolmen — a monoto-
nous record of unprogressive ideas — need not be
scheduled here, the more so as we approach the
period of discoveries momentous in their ultimate
effect upon opinions which now possess only the
value attaching to the history of discredited con-
ceptions of the universe. Commerce, more than sci-
entific curiosity, gave the impetus to the discovery
that the earth is a globe. Trade with the East was
divided between Genoa and Venice. These cities
were rivals, and the Genoese, alarmed at the growing
success of the Venetians, resolved to try to reach
India from the west. Their schemes were justified
by reports of land indications brought by seamen
who had passed through the " Pillars of Hercules "
to the Atlantic. The sequel is well known. Colum-
bus, after clerical opposition, and rebuffs from other
states, " offering," as Mr. Payne says, in his excel-
lent History of America, " though he knew it not,
the New World in exchange for three ships and pro-
visions for twelve months," finally secured the sup-
port of the Spanish king, and sailed from Cadiz on
the 3d of August, 1492. On nth of October he
sighted the fringes of the New World, and believing

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 85

that he had sailed from Spain to India, gave the name
West Indies to the island-group. America itself had
been discovered by roving Norsemen five hundred
years before, but the fact was buried in Icelandic
tradition. Following Columbus, Vasco de Gama, a
Portuguese, set sail in 1497, and taking a southerly
course, doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Twenty-
two years later, Ferdinand Magellan started on a
voyage more famous than that of Columbus, since
his ambition was to sail round the world, and thus
complete the chain of proof against the theory of its
flatness. For " though the Church hath evermore
from Holy Writ afidrmed that the earth should be a
widespread plain bordered by the waters, yet he
comforted himself when he considered that in the
eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is
round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner,
is the substance." Doubling Cape Horn through
the straits that bear his name, Magellan entered the
vast ocean whose calm surface caused him to call it
the Pacific, and after terrible sufferings, he reached
the Ladrone Islands where, either at the hands of a
mutinous crew, or of savages, he was killed. His
chief lieutenant, Sebastian d'Eleano, continued the
voyage, and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope,
brought the San Vittoria — name of happy omen —
to anchor at St. Lucar, near Seville, on 7th of Sep-
tember, 1522. Brought, too, the story of a circum-
navigated globe, and of new groups of stars never
seen under northern skies.

86 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

The scene shifts, for the time being, from the earth
to the heavens. The Church had barely recovered
from the blow struck at her authority on matters of
secular knowledge, when another dealt, and that
by an ecclesiastic, Copernicus, Canon of Frauenburg,
in Prussia. But before pursuing this, some reference
to the revolt against the Church of Rome, which is
the great event of the sixteenth century, is necessary,
if only to inquire whether the movement known as
the Reformation justified its name as freeing the
intellect from theological thraldom. Far-reaching
as were the areas which it covered and the effects
which it wrought, its quarrel with the Church of
Rome was not because of that Church's attitude to-
ward freedom of thought. On the Continent it was
a protest of nobler minds against the corruptions
fostered by the Papacy; in England, it was personal
and political in origin, securing popular support by
its anti-sacerdotal character, and its appeal to na-
tional irritation against foreign control. But, both
here and abroad, it sought mending rather than end-
ing; " not to vary in any jot from the faith Catholic."
It disputed the claim of the Church to be the sole
interpreter of Scripture, and contended that such
interpretation was the right and duty of the indi-
vidual. But it would not admit the right of the
individual to call in question the authority of the
Bible itself: to that book alone must a man go for
knowledge of things temporal as of things spiritual.
So that the Reformation was but an exchange of

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. g/

fetters, or, as Huxley happily puts it, the scraping
of a little rust off the chains which still bound the
mind. '' Learning perished where Luther reigned,"
Baid Erasmus, and in proof of it we find the Re-
former agreeing with his coadjutor, Melanchthon, in
permitting no tampering with the written Word.
Copernicus notwithstanding, they had no doubt that
the earth was fixed and that sun and stars travelled
round it, because the Bible said so. Peter Martyr,
one of the early Lutheran converts, in his Com-
mentary on Genesis, declared that wrong opinions
about the creation as narrated in that book would
render valueless all the promises of Christ. Wherein
he spoke truly. As for the schoolmen, Luther called
them " locusts, caterpillars, frogs, and lice." Rea-
son he denounced as the " arch whore " and the
" devil's bride," Aristotle is a " prince of darkness,
horrid impostor, public and professed liar, beast, and
twice execrable." Consistently enough, Luther be-
lieved vehemently in a personal devil, and in witches;
" I would myself burn them," he says, " even as it is
written in the Bible that the priests stoned offenders."
To him demoniacal possession was a fact clear as
noonday: idiocy, lunacy, epilepsy and all other men-
tal and nervous disorders were due to it. Hence,
a movement whose intent appeared to be the free-
ing of the human spirit riveted more tightly the
bolts that imprisoned it; arresting the physical ex-
planation of mental diseases and that curative treat-
ment of them which is one of the countless services

38 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

of science to suffering mankind. To Luther, the
descent of Christ into hell, which modern research
has shown to be a variant of an Orphic legend of
the underworld, was a real event, Jesus going thither
that he might conquer Satan in a hand-to-hand
struggle.

Therefore, freedom of thought, as we define it,
had the bitterest foe in Luther, although, in his con-
demnation of " works," and his fanatical dogma of
man's " justification by faith alone," which made
him reject the Epistle of James as one " of straw,"
and as unworthy of a. place in the Canon, he unwit-
tingly drove in the thin end of the rationalist wedge.
The Reformers had hedged the canonical books with
theories of verbal inspiration which extended even
to the punctuation of the sentences. They thus ren-
dered intelligent study of the Bible impossible, and
did grievous injury to a collection of writings of vast
historical value, and of abiding interest as records
of man's primitive speculations and spiritual devel-
opment. But Luther's application of the right of
private judgment to the omission or addition of this
or that book into a canon which had been closed by
a Council of the Church, surrendered the whole posi-
tion, since there was no telling where the thing might
stop.

Copernicus waited full thirty years before he ven-
tured to make his theory pubHc. The Ptolemaic
system, which assumed a fixed earth with sun, moon,
and stars revolving above it, had held the field for

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, gg

about fourteen hundred years. It accorded with
Scripture ; it was adopted by the Church ; and, more-
over, it was confirmed by the senses, the correc-
tion of which still remains, and will long remain, a
condition of intellectual advance. Little wonder is
it, then, that Copernicus hesitated to broach a theory
thus supported, or that, when pubHshed, it was put
forth in tentative form as a possible explanation
more in accord with the phenomena. A preface,
presumably by a friendly hand, commended the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies to Pope Paul
III. It urged that " as in previous times others had
been allowed the privilege of feigning what circles
they chose in order to explain the phenomena," Co-
pernicus " had conceived that he might take the lib-
erty of trying whether, on the supposition of the
earth's motion, it was possible to find better explana-
tions than the ancient ones of the revolutions of the
celestial orbs." A copy of the book was placed in
the hands of its author only a few hours before his
death on 23d of May, 1543.

This " upstart astrologer," this " fool who wishes
to reverse the entire science of astronomy," for
" sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded
the sun to stand still, and not the earth " — these are
Luther's words — was, therefore, beyond the grip of
the Holy Inquisition. But a substitute was forth-
coming. Giordano Bruno, a Dominican monk, had
added to certain heterodox beliefs the heresy of Co-
pernicanism, which he publicly taught from Oxford
7

90

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

to Venice. For these cumulative crimes he was im-
prisoned and, after two years, condemned to be put
to death " as mercifully as possible and without the
shedding of his blood," a Catholic euphemism for
burning a man alive. The murder was committed
in Rome on 17th of February, 1600.

The year 1543 marks an epoch in biology as in
astronomy. As shown in the researches of Galen,
an Alexandrian physician of the second century,
there had been no difficulty in studying the struc-
ture of the lower animals, but, fortified both by tradi-
tion and by prejudice, the Church refused to permit
dissection of the human body, and in the latter part
of the thirteenth century, Boniface VIII. issued a
Bull of the major excommunication against offend-
ers. Prohibition, as usual, led to evasion, and Ve-
salius. Professor of Anatomy in Padua University,
resorted to various devices to procure " subjects,"
the bodies of criminals being easiest to obtain. The
end justified the means, as he was able to correct
certain errors of Galen, and to give the quietus to
the old legend, based upon the myth of the creation
of Eve, that man has one rib less than woman. This
was among the discoveries announced in his De Cor-
poris Humani Fabrica, published when he was only
twenty-eight years of age. The book fell under the
ban of the Church because Vesalius gave no support
to the belief in an indestructible bone, nucleus of
the resurrection body, in man. The belief had, no
doubt, near relation to that of the Jews in the os

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY.

91

sacru, and may remind us of Descartes' fanciful loca-
tion of the soul in the minute cone-like part of the
brain known as the conarium, or pineal gland. On
some baseless charge of attempting the dissection of
a living subject, the Inquisition haled Vesalius to
prison, and would have put him to death " as merci-
fully as possible," but for the intervention of King
Charles V. of Spain, to whom Vesalius had been
physician. Returning in October, 1564, from a pil-
grimage taken, presumably, as atonement for his
alleged offence, he was shipwrecked on the coast of
Zante, and died of exhaustion.

While the heretical character and tendencies of
discoveries in astronomy and anatomy awoke active
opposition from the Church, the work of men of the
type of Gesner, the eminent Swiss naturalist, and of
Caesalpino, professor of botany at Padua, passed
unquestioned. No dogma was endangered by the
classification of plants and animals. But when a
couple of generations after the death of Copernicus
had passed, the Inquisition found a second victim
in the famous Galileo, who was born at Pisa in 1 564.
After spending some years in mechanical and mathe-
matical pursuits, he began a series of observations
in confirmation of the Copernican theory, of the truth
of which he had been convinced in early life. With
the aid of a rude telescope, made by his own hands,
he discovered the satellites of Jupiter; the moon-
like phases of Venus and Mars; mountains and val-
leys in the moon; spots on the sun's disk; and the

92

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

countless stars which composed the luminous band
known as the Milky Way. Nought occurred to
disturb his observations till, in a work on the Solar
Spots, he explained the movements of the earth and
of the heavenly bodies according to Copernicus. On
the appearance of that book the authorities contented
themselves with a caution to the author. But action
followed his supplemental Dialogue on the Coperni-
can and Ptolemaic Systems. Through that conven-
ient medium which the title implies, Galileo makes
the defender of the Copernican theory an easy victor,
and for this he was brought before the Inquisition
in 1633. After a tedious trial, and threats of " rigor-
ous personal examination," a euphemism for " tor-
ture," he was, despite the plea — too specious to de-
ceive— that he had merely put the pros and cons as
between the rival theories, condemned to abjure all
that he had taught. There is a story, probably ficti-
tious, since it was first told in 1789, that when the
old man rose from his knees, he muttered his convic-
tion that the earth moves, in the words " e pur si
muove." As a sample of the arguments used by
the ecclesiastics when they substituted, as rare ex-
ception, the pen for the faggot, the reasoning ad-
vanced by one Sizzi against the existence of Jupiter's
moons, may be cited. " There are seven windows
given to animals in the domicile of the head, through
which the air is admitted to the tabernacle of the
body, viz.: two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and one
mouth. So, in the heavens, as in a macrocosm, or

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. ^3

great world, there are two favourable stars, Jupiter
and Venus; two unpropitious. Mars and Saturn;
two luminaries, the sun and moon, and Mercury
alone undecided and indifferent. From these and
many other phenomena of Nature, which it were
tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of
planets is necessarily seven. Moreover, the satel-
lites are invisible to the naked eye, and, therefore,
can exercise no influence over the earth, and would,
of course, be useless; and, therefore, do not exist."
In this brief summary of the attitude of the
Church toward science, it is not possible, and if it
were so, it is not needful, to refer in detail to the
contributions of the more speculative philosophers,
who, although they made no discoveries, advocated
those methods of research and directions of inquiry
which made the discoveries possible. Among these
a prominent name is that of Lord Bacon, whose
system of philosophy, known as the Inductive, pro-
ceeds from the collection, examination and compari-
son of any group of connected facts to the relation
of them to some general principle. The universal
is thus explained by the particular. But the inductive
method was no invention of Bacon's; wherever ob-
servation or testing of a thing preceded speculation
about it, as with his greater namesake, there the
Baconian system had its application. Lord Bacon,
moreover, undervalued Greek science; he argued
against the Copernican theory; and either knew
nothing of, or ignored, Harvey's momentous discov-

Q4 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

ery of the circulation of the blood. A more illustrious
name than his is that of Rene Descartes, a man who
combined theory with observation; *' one who," in
Huxley's words, " saw that the discoveries of Galileo
meant that the remotest parts of the universe were
governed by mechanical laws, while those of Harvey
meant that the same laws presided over the opera-
tions of that portion of the world which is nearest to
us, namely, our own bodily frame." The greatness
of this man, a good Catholic, whom the Jesuits
charged with Atheism, has no mean tribute in his
influence on an equally remarkable man, Benedict
Spinoza. Spinoza reduced the Cartesian analysis of
phenomena into God, mind and matter to one phe-
nomenon, namely, God, of whom matter and spirit,
extension and thought, are but attributes. His short
life fell within the longer span of Newton's, whose
strange subjection to the theological influences of
his age is seen in this immortal interpreter of the
laws of the universe wasting his later years on an
attempt to interpret unfulfilled prophecy. These and
others, as Locke, Leibnitz, Herder, and Schelling,
like the great Hebrew leader, had glimpses of a
goodly land which they were not themselves to
enter. But, perhaps, in the roll of illustrious men
to whom prevision came, none have better claim to
everlasting remembrance than Immanuel Kant. For
in his Theory of the Heavens, published in 1755, he
anticipates that hypothesis of the origin of the pres-
ent universe which, associated with the succeeding

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY, g^

names of Laplace and Herschel, has, under correc-
tions furnished by modern physics, common accept-
ance among us. Then, as shown in the following
extract, Kant foresees the theory of the development
of life from formless stufif to the highest types: " It
is desirable to examine the great domain of organized
beings by means of a methodical comparative anato-
my, in order to discover whether we may not find
in them something resembling a system, and that
too in connection with their mode of generation, so
that we may not be compelled to stop short with a
mere consideration of forms as they are — which gives
no insight into their generation — and need not des-
pair of gaining a full insight into this department of
Nature. The agreement of so many kinds of animals
in a certain common plan of structure, which seems
to be visible not only in their skeletons, but also in
the arrangement of the other parts — so that a won-
derfully simple typical form, by the shortening or
lengthening of some parts, and by the suppression
and development of others, might be able to produce
an immense variety of species — gives us a ray of
hope, though feeble, that here perhaps some results
may be obtained, by the application of the principle
of the mechanism of Nature; without which, in fact,
no science can exist. This analogy of forms (in so
far as they seem to have been produced in accordance
with a common prototype, notwithstanding their
great variety) strengthens the supposition that they
have an actual blood-relationship, due to derivation

96

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

from a common parent; a supposition which is ar-
rived at by observation of the graduated approxi-
mation of one class of animals to another, beginning
with the one in which the principle of purposiveness
seems to be most conspicuous, namely, man, and ex-
tending down to the polyps, and from these even
down to mosses and lichens, and arriving finally at
raw matter, the lowest stage of Nature observable
by us. From this raw matter and its forces, the
whole apparatus of Nature seems to have been de-
rived according to mechanical laws (such as those
which resulted in the production of crystals) ; yet this
apparatus, as seen in organic beings, is so incom-
prehensible to us, that we feel ourselves compelled to
conceive for it a different principle. But it would
seem that the archaeologist of Nature is at liberty to
regard the great Family of creatures (for as a Family
we must conceive it, if the above-mentioned continu-
ous and connected relationship has a real foundation)
as having sprung from their immediate results of her
earliest revolutions, judging from all the laws of
their mechanisms known to or conjectured by him."
In our arrival at the age of these seers, we feel
the play of a freer, purer air; a lull in the miasmatic
currents that bring intolerance on their wings. The
tolerance that approaches is due to no surrender of
its main position by dogmatic theology, but to that
larger perception of the variety and complexity of
life, ignorance of, or wilful blindness to, which is the
secret of the survival of rigid opinion. The demon-

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. gy

stration of the earth's roundness; the discovery of
America; the growing conception of inter-relation
between the lowest and the highest life-forms; the
slow but sure acceptance of the Copernican theory;
and, above all, the idea of a Cosmos, an unbroken
order, to which every advance in knowledge con-
tributes, justified and fostered the free play of the
intellect. Foreign as yet, however, to the minds of
widest breadth, was the conception of the inclusion
of Man himself in the universal order. Duality —
Nature overruled by supernature — was the unaltered
note; the supernature as part of Nature a thing un-
dreamed of. Nor could it be otherwise while the
belief in diabolical agencies still held the field, send-
ing wretched victims to the stake on the evidence
of conscientious witnesses, and with the concurrence
of humane judges. Animism, the root of all per-
sonification, whether of good or evil, had lost none
of its essential character, and but little of its vigour.
" I flatter myself," says Hume, in the opening
words of the essay upon Miracles, in his Inquiry
Concerning Human Understanding, " that I have
discovered an argument of a like nature (he is refer-
ring to Archbishop Tillotson's argument on Tran-
substantiation) which, if just, will, with the wise and
learned, be an everlasting check to all kind of super-
stitious delusion, and, consequently, will be useful
as long as the world endures." Hume certainly did
not overrate the force of the blow which he dealt at
supernaturalism, one of a series of attacks which, in

gS PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

France and Britain, carried the war into the camp
of the enemy, and changed its tactics from aggressive
to defensive. But none the less is it true that the
*' superstitious delusions " against which he planted
his logical artillery were killed neither by argument
nor by evidence. Delusion and error do not perish
by controversial warfare. They perish under the
slow and silent operation of changes to which they
are unable to adapt themselves. The atmosphere is
altered: the organism can neither respond nor re-
spire; therefore, it dies. Thus, save where lurks the
ignorance which is its breath of life, has wholly per-
ished belief in witchcraft; thus, too, is slowly perish-
ing belief in miracles, and, with this, belief in the
miraculous events, the incarnation, resurrection, and
ascension of Jesus, on which the fundamental tenets
of Christianity are based, and in which lies so largely
the secret of its long hostility to knowledge.

PART III.

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE.

A. D. 1600 ONWARDS.

" Though science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork,
ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely comes back again." —
Huxley, Prologue to Collected Essays, vol. v.

The exercise of a more tolerant spirit, to which
reference has been made, had its Hmits. It is true
that Dr. South, a famous divine, denounced the
Royal Society (founded 1645) ^s an irreligious body;
although a Dr. WaUis, one of the first members, espe-
cially declared that " matters of theology " were
"precluded": the business being "to discourse and
consider of philosophical inquiries and such as re-
lated thereunto; as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry,
Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chym-
icks, and Natural Experiments ; with the state of these
studies, and their cultivation at home and abroad."
Regardless of South and such as agreed with him,
Torricelli worked at hydrodynamics, and discovered
the principle of the barometer; Boyle inquired into
the law of the compressibility of gases; Malpighi
examined minute life-forms and the structure of or-
gans under the microscope; Ray and Willughby
classified plants and animals; Newton theorized on

Q9

lOO PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the nature of light; and Roemer measured its speed;
Halley estimated the sun's distance, predicted the
return of comets, and observed the transits of Venus
and Mercury; Hunter dissected specimens, and laid
the foundations of the science of comparative anat-
omy; and many another illustrious worker con-
tributed to the world's stock of knowledge " without
let or hindrance," for in all this " matters of theology
were precluded."

But the old spirit of resistance was aroused when,
after a long lapse of time, inquiry was revived in
a branch of science which, it will be noticed, has no
distinct place in the subjects dealt with by the Royal
Society at the start. That science was Geology; a
science destined, in its ultimate scope, to prove a far
more powerful dissolvent of dogma than any of its
compeers.

It seems strange that the discovery of the earth's
true shape and movements was not sooner followed
by investigation into her contents, but the old ideas
of special creation remained unaffected by these and
other discoveries, and the more or less detailed
account of the process of creation furnished in the
book of Genesis sufficed to arrest curiosity. In the
various departments of the inorganic universe the
earth was the last to become subject of scientific re-
search; as in study of the organic universe, man ex-
cluded himself till science compelled his inclusion.

After more than two thousand years, the Ionian
philosophers " come to their own " again. Xenoph-

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE, loi

anes of Colophon has been referred to as arriving,
five centuries b. c, at a true explanation of the im-
prints of plants and animals in rocks. Pythagoras,
who lived before him, may, if Ovid, writing near the
Christian era, is to be trusted, have reached some
sound conclusions about the action of water in the
changes of land and sea areas. But we are on surer
ground when we meet the geographer Strabo, who
lived in the reign of Augustus. Describing the coun-
tries in which he travelled, he notes their various
features, and explains the causes of earthquakes and
allied phenomena. Then eleven hundred years pass
before we find any explanation of like rational char-
acter supplied. This was furnished by the Arabian
philosopher, Avicenna, whose theory of the origin
of mountains is the more marvellous when we re-
member what intellectual darkness surrounded him.
He says that " mountains may be due to two differ-
ent causes. Either they are effects of upheavals of
the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a
violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water,
which, cutting for itself a new route, has denuded
the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some
soft, some hard. The winds and waters disintegrate
the one, but leave the other intact. Most of the emi-
nences of the earth have had this latter origin. It
would require a long period of time for all such
changes to be accomplished, during which the moun-
tains themselves might be somewhat diminished in
size. But that water has been the main cause of

I02 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

these effects is proved by the existence of fossil re-
mains of aquatic and other animals on many moun-
tains " (cf. Osborn's From the Greeks to Darwin,
p. 76). A similar explanation of fossils was given
by the engineer-artist Leonardo de Vinci in the fif-
teenth century, and by the potter Bernard Palissy,
in the sixteenth century; but thence onward, for
more than a hundred years, the earth was as a sealed
book to man. The earlier chapters of its history,
once reopened, have never been closed again. Varied
as were the theories of the causes which wrought
manifold changes on its surface, they agreed in de-
manding a far longer time-history than the Church
was willing to allow. If the reasoning of the geolo-
gists was sound, the narrative in Genesis was a myth.
Hence the renewal of struggle between the Christian
Church and Science, waged, at first, over the six
days of the Creation.

Here and there, in bygone days, a sceptical voice
had been raised in denial of the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch. Such was that of La Peyrere
who, in 1655, published an instalment of a work in
which he anticipated what is nowadays accepted,
but what then was akin to blasphemy to utter. For
not only does he doubt whether Moses had any
hand in the writings attributed to him: he rejects
the orthodox view of suffering and death as the
penalties of Adam's disobedience; and gives rational-
istic interpretation of the appearance of the star of
Bethlehem, and of the darkness at the Crucifixion.

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE,

103

But La Peyrere became a Roman Catholic, and, of
course, recanted his opinions. Then, nearer the time
when controversy on the historical character of the
Scriptures was becoming active, one Astruc, a French
physician, suggested, in a work pubHshed in 1753,
that Moses may have used older materials in his
compilation of the earlier parts of the Pentateuch.

But, practically, the five books included under
that name, were believed to have been written by
Moses under divine authority. The statement in
Genesis that God made the universe and its contents,
both living and non-living, in six days of twenty-
four hours each, was explicit. Thus interpreted, as
their plain meaning warranted. Archbishop Usher
made his famous calculation as to the time elapsing
between the creation and the birth of Christ. Dr.
White, in his important Warfare of Science with
Theology, gives an amusing example of the applica-
tion of Usher's method in detail. A seventeenth
century divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice- Chancellor of
Cambridge University, computed that " man was
created by the Trinity on 23d October, 4004 b. c,
at nine oclock in the morning." The same theo-
logian, who, by the way, was a very eminent Hebrew
scholar, following the interpretation of the great
Fathers of the Church, " declared, as the result of
profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures,
that ' heaven and earth, centre and circumference,
and clouds full of water, were created all together,
in the same instant.' "

104 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

The story of the Deluge was held to furnish suf-
ficing explanation of the organic remains yielded by
the rocks, but faiHng this, a multitude of fantastic
theories were at hand to explain the fossils. They
were said to be due to a *' formative quality " in the
soil; to its "plastic virtue"; to a '' lapidific juice";
to the " fermentation of fatty matter "; to '' the influ-
ence of the heavenly bodies," or, as the late eminent
naturalist, Philip Gosse, seriously suggested in his
whimsical book Omphalos: an Attempt to untie
the Geological Knot, they were but simulacra where-
with a mocking Deity rebuked the curiosity of man.
Every explanation, save the right and obvious one,
had its defenders, because it was essential to support
some theory to rebut the evidence supplied by re-
mains of animals as to the existence of death in
the world before the fall of Adam. Otherwise, the
statements in the Old Testament, on which the Paul-
ine reasoning rested, were baseless, and to discredit
these was to undermine the authority of the Scrip-
tures from Genesis to the Apocalypse. No wonder,
therefore, that theology was up in arms, or that it
saw in geology a deadlier foe than astronomy had
seemed to be in ages past. The Sorbonne, or Faculty
of Theology, in Paris burnt the books of the geolo-
gists, banished their authors, and, in the case of
Buffon, the famous naturalist, condemned him to re-
tract the awful heresy, which was declared " con-
trary to the creed of the Church," contained in these
words: "The waters of the sea have produced the

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE,

105

mountains and valleys of the land; the waters of the
heavens, reducing all to a level, will at last deliver
the whole land over to the sea, and the sea succes-
sively prevailing over the land, will leave dry new
continents like those which we inhabit." So the old
man repeated the submission of Galileo, and pub-
Hshed his recantation: " I declare that I had no in-
tention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I
believe most firmly all therein related about the
creation, both as to order of time and matter of
fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting
the formation of the earth, and generally all which
may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." That
was in the year 1751.

If the English theologians could not deliver
heretics of the type of Bufifon to the secular arm,
they used all the means that denunciation supplied
for delivering them over to Satan. Epithets were
hurled at them; arguments drawn from a world
accursed of God levelled at them. Saint Jerome,
living in the fourth century, had pointed to the
cracked and crumpled rocks as proof of divine anger :
now Wesley and others saw in " sin the moral cause
of earthquakes, whatever their natural cause might
be," since before Adam's transgression, no convul-
sions or eruptions ruffled the calm of Paradise.
Meanwhile, the probing of the earth's crust went on;
revealing, amidst all the seeming confusion of dis-
torted and metamorphosed rocks, an unvarying se-
quence of strata, and of the fossils imbedded in them.
8

Io6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Different causes were assigned for the vast changes
ranging over vast periods; one school believing in
the action of volcanic and such like catastrophic
agents; another in the action of aqueous agents, see-
ing, more consistently, in present operations the ex-
planation of the causes of past changes. But there
was no diversity of opinion concerning the exten-
sion of the earth's time-history and life-history to
millions on millions of years.

So, when this was to be no longer resisted, theo-
logians sought some basis of compromise on such
non-fundamental points as the six days of creation.
It was suggested that perhaps these did not mean
the seventh part of a week, but periods, or eons, or
something equally elastic; and that if the Mosaic
narrative was regarded as a poetic revelation of the
general succession of phenomena, beginning with the
development of order out of chaos, and ending with
the creation of man. Scripture would be found to
have anticipated or revealed what science confirms.
It was impossible, so theologians argued, that there
could be aught else than harmony between the di-
vine works and the writings which were assumed to
be of divine origin. Science could not contradict
revelation, and whatever seemed contradictory was
due to misapprehension either of the natural fact,
or to misreading of the written word. But although
the story of the creation might be clothed, as so
exalted and moving a theme warranted, in poetic
form, that of the fall of Adam and of the drowning

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE,

107

of his descendants, eight persons excepted, must
be taken in all its appalling literalness. Confirmation
of the Deluge story was found in the fossil shells on
high mountain tops; while as for the giants of ante-
diluvian times, there were the huge bones in proof.
Some of these relics of mastodon and mammoth were
actually hung up in churches as evidence that " there
were giants in those days " ! Geofifroy Saint-Hilaire
tells of one Henrion, who published a book in 1718
giving the height of Adam as one hundred and
twenty-three feet nine inches, and of Eve as one hun-
dred and eighteen feet nine inches, Noah being of
rather less stature. But to parley with science is
fatal to theology. Moreover, arguments which in-
volve the cause they support in ridicule may be left
to refute themselves. And while theology was hesi-
tating, as in the amusing example supplied by Dr.
William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (published
in 1863) wherein the reader, turning up the arti-
cle " Deluge," is referred to " Flood," and thence
to " Noah " ; archaeology produced the Chaldsean
original of the legend whence the story of the
flood is derived. With candour as commendable
as it is rare, the Reverend Professor Driver, from
whom quotation has been made already, admits
that " read without prejudice or bias, the narra-
tive of Genesis i. creates an impression at vari-
ance with the facts revealed by science " ; all ef-
forts at reconciliation being only " different modes
of obliterating the characteristic features of Gene-

I08 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

sis, and of reading into it a view which it does not
express."

While the ground in favour of the literal inter-
pretation of Genesis was being contested, an invad-
ing force, that had been gathering strength with the
years, was advancing in the shape of the science of
Biology. The workers therein fall into two classes:
the one, represented by Linnaeus and his school, ap-
plied themselves to the classifying and naming of
plants and animals; the other, represented by Cuvier
and his school, examined into structure and func-
tion. Anatomy made clear the machinery: physi-
ology the work which it did, and the conditions under
which the work was done. Then, through compari-
son of corresponding organs and their functions in
various life-forms, came growing perception of their
unity. But only to a few came gleams of that unity
as proof of common descent of plant and animal,
for, save in scattered hints of inter-relation between
species, which occur from the time of Lord Bacon
onward, the theory of their immutability was domi-
nant until forty years ago.

Four men form the chief vanguard of the biologi-
cal movement. " Modern classificatory method and
nomenclature have largely grown out of the work
of Linnaeus; the modern conception of biology, as a
science, and of its relation to climatology, geogra-
phy, and geology, are as largely rooted in the labours
of Bufifon; comparative anatomy and palaeontology
owe a vast debt to Cuvier's results; while inverte-

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE. iqq

brate zoology and the revival of the idea of Evolu-
tion are intimately dependent on the results of the
work of Lamarck. In other words, the main results
of biology up to the early years of this century are to
be found in, or spring out of, the works of these men."

Linnaeus, son of a Lutheran pastor, born at
Roeshult, in Sweden, in 1707, had barely passed his
twenty-fifth year before laying the ground-plan of
the system of classification which bears his name,
a system which advance in knowledge has since
modified. Based on external resemblances, its
formulation was possible only to a mind intent on
minute and accurate detail, and less observant of
general principles. In brief, the work of Linnaeus
was constructive, not interpretative. Hence, per-
haps, conjoined to the theological ideas then current,
the reason why the larger question of the fixity of
species entered not into his purview. To him each
plant and animal retained the impress of the Creative
hand that had shaped it '' in the beginning," and,
throughout his working life, he departed but slightly
from the plan with which he started, namely, " reck-
oning as many species as issued in pairs " from the
Almighty fiat.

Not so Buffon, born on his father's estate in Bur-
gundy in the same year as Linnaeus, whom he sur-
vived ten years, dying in 1788. His opinions, clash-
ing as they did with orthodox creeds, were given in
a tentative, questioning fashion, so that where eccle-
siastical censure fell, retreat was easier. As has been

no PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

seen in his submission to the Sorbonne, he was not
of the stuff of which martyrs are made. Perhaps he
felt that the ultimate victory of his opinions was suf-
ficiently assured to make self-sacrifice needless. But,
under cover of pretence at inquiry, his convictions
are clear enough. He was no beHever in the perma-
nent stability of species, and noted, as warrant of
this, the otherwise unexplained presence of aborted
or rudimentary structures. For example, he says,
** the pig does not appear to have been formed upon
an original, special, and perfect plan, since it is a
compound of other animals; it has evidently useless
parts, or rather, parts of which it cannot make any
use, toes, all the bones of which are perfectly formed,
and which, nevertheless, are of no service to it. Na-
ture is far from subjecting herself to final causes in
the formation of her creatures." Then, further, as
showing his convictions on the non-fixity of species,
he says, how many of them, " being perfected or de-
generated by the great changes in land and sea, by
the favours or disfavours of Nature, by food, by the
prolonged influences of climate, contrary or favour-
able, are no longer what they formerly were." But
he writes with an eye on the Sorbonne when, hinting
at a possible common ancestor of horse and ass, and
of ape and man, he slyly adds that since the Bible
teaches the contrary, the thing cannot be. Thus he
attacked covertly; by adit, not by direct assault;
and to those who read between the lines there was
given a key wherewith to unlock the door to the

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE, m

solution of many biological problems. Buffon, con-
sequently, was the most stimulating and suggestive
naturalist of the eighteenth century. There comes
between him and Lamarck, both in order of time
and sequence of ideas, Erasmus Darwin, the distin-
guished grandfather of Charles Darwin.

Born at Eton, near Newark, in 1731, he walked
the hospitals at London and Edinburgh, and settled,
for some years, at Lichfield, ultimately removing to
Derby. Since Lucretius, no scientific writer had
put his cosmogonic speculations into verse until Dr.
Darwin made the heroic metre, in which stereotyped
form the poetry of his time was cast, the vehicle of
rhetorical descriptions of the amours of flowers and
the evolution of the thumb. The Loves of the Plants,
ridiculed in the Loves of the Triangles in the Anti-
Jacobin, is not to be named in the same breath, for
stateliness of diction, and majesty of movement, as
the De rerum Natura. But both the prose work
Zoonomia and the poem The Temple of Nature (pub-
lished after the author's death in 1802) have claim
to notice as the matured expression of conclusions at
which the clear-sighted, thoughtful, and withal, ec-
centric doctor had arrived in the closing years of his
life. Krause's Life and Study of the Works of Eras-
mus Darwin suppHes an excellent outline of the con-
tents of books which are now rarely taken down
from the shelves, and makes clear that their author
had the root of the matter in him. His observations
and reading, for the influence of Bufifon and others

112 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

is apparent in his writings, led him to reject the cur-
rent belief in the separate creation of species. He
saw that this theory wholly failed to account for the
existence of abnormal forms, of adaptations of the
structure of organs to their work, of gradations be-
tween living things, and other features inconsistent
with the doctrine of ** let lions be, and there were
lions." His shrewd comment on the preformation
notion of development has been quoted (p. 20).
The substance of his argument in support of a
"physical basis of life" is as follows: *' When we
revolve in our minds the metamorphosis of animals,
as from the tadpole to the frog; secondly, the changes
produced by artificial cultivation, as in the breeds
of horses, dogs, and sheep ; thirdly, the changes pro-
duced by conditions of climate and of season, as in
the sheep of warm climates being covered with hair
instead of wool, and the hares and partridges of
northern climates becoming white in winter; when,
further, we observe the changes of structure pro-
duced by habit, as seen especially by men of dififer-
ent occupations; or the changes produced by arti-
ficial mutilation and prenatal influences, as in the
crossing of species and production of monsters;
fourth, when we observe the essential unity of plan
in all warm-blooded animals — we are led to con-
clude that they have been ahke produced from a
similar living filament." The concluding words of
this extract make remarkable approach to the mod-
ern theory of the origin of life in the complex jelly-

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE.

113

like protoplasm, or, as some call it, nuclein or nucleo-
plasm. And, on this, Erasmus Darwin further re-
marks: ''As the earth and ocean were probably
peopled with vegetable productions long before the
existence of animals, and many families of these
animals long before other animals of them, shall we
conjecture that one and the same kind of living fila-
ment is and has been the cause of all organic life? "
Nor does he make any exception to this law of or-
ganic development. He quotes Buffon and Hel-
vetius to the effect — " that many features in the anat-
omy of man point to a former quadrupedal position,
and indicate that he is not yet fully adapted to the
erect position; that, further, man may have arisen
from a single family of monkeys, in which, acciden-
tally, the opposing muscle brought the thumb against
the tips of the fingers, and that this muscle gradually
increased in size by use in successive generations."
While we who live in these days of fuller knowledge
of agents of variation may detect the mvnus in all
foregoing speculations, our interest is increased in
the thought of their near approach to the cardinal
discovery. And a rapid run through the later writ-
ings of Dr. Darwin shows that there is scarcely a
side of the great theory of Evolution which has es-
caped his notice or suggestive comment. Grant
Allen, in his excellent little monograph on Charles
Darwin, says that the theory of " natural selection
was the only cardinal one in the evolutionary system
on which Erasmus Darwin did not actuallv forestall

114

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

his more famous and greater namesake. For its
full perception, the discovery of Malthus had to be
collated with the speculations of Buffon."

In the Historical Sketch on the Progress of
Opinion on the Origin of Species, which Darwin
prefixed to his book, he refers to Lamarck as " the
first man whose conclusions on the subject excited
much attention; " rendering " the eminent service of
arousing attention to the probability of all change
in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world,
being the result of law, and not of miraculous inter-
position." Lamarck was born at Bezantin, in Picar-
dy, in 1744. Intended for the Church, he chose the
army, but an injury resulting from a practical joke
cut short his career as a soldier. He then became a
banker's clerk, in which occupation he secured lei-
sure for his favourite pursuit of natural history.
Through Buffon's influence he procured a civil ap-
pointment, and ultimately became a colleague of
Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire in the Museum of
Natural History at Paris. Of Cuvier it will here
suffice to say that he remained to the end of his life
a believer in special creation, or, what amounts to
the same thing, a series of special creations which,
he held, followed the catastrophic annihilations of
prior plants and animals. Although orthodox by
conviction, his researches told against his tenets, be-
cause his important work in the reconstruction of
skeletons of long extinct animals laid the foundation
of palaeontology.

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE.

115

To Lamarck, says Haeckel, *' will always belong
the immortal glory of having for the first time worked
out the Theory of Descent as an independent sci-
entific theory of the first order, and as the philosophi-
cal foundation of the whole science of Biology." He
taught that in the beginnings of life only the very sim-
plest and lowest animals and plants came into exist-
ence; those of more complex structure developing
from these; man himself being descended from ape-
like mammals. For the Aristotelian mechanical figure
of life as a ladder, with its detached steps, he substituted
the more appropriate figure of a tree, as an inter-
related organism. He argued that the course of the
earth's development, and also of all life upon it, was
continuous, and not interrupted by violent revolu-
tions. In this he followed BufTon and Hutton. Buf-
fon, in his Theory of the Earth, argues that " in
order to understand what had taken place in the past,
or what will happen in the future, we have but to
observe what is going on in the present." This is
the keynote of modern geology. '' Life," adds
Lamarck, " is a purely physical phenomenon. All
its phenomena depend on mechanical, physical, and
chemical causes which are inherent in the nature of
matter itself." He believed in a form of spontaneous
generation. Rejecting Bufifon's theory of the direct
action of the surroundings as agents of change in
living things, he sums up the causes of organic evo-
lution in the following propositions:

I. Life tends by its inherent forces to increase

Il6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the volume of each living body and of all its parts
up to a limit determined by its own needs.

2. New wants in animals give rise to new move-
ments which produce organs.

3. The development of these organs is in propor-
tion to their employment.

4. New developments are transmitted to off-
spring.

The second and third propositions were illus-
trated by examples which have, with good reason,
provoked ridicule. Lamarck accounts for the long
neck of the girafife by that organ being continually
stretched out to reach the leaves at the tree-tops;
for the long tongue of the ant-eater or the wood-
pecker by these creatures protruding it to get at
food in channel or crevice; for the webbed feet of
aquatic animals by the outstretching of the mem-
branes between the toes in swimming; and for the
erect position of man by the constant efforts of his
ape-like ancestors to keep upright. The legless con-
dition of the serpent which, in the legend of the Gar-
den of Eden, is accounted for on moral grounds, is
thus explained by Lamarck: "Snakes sprang from
reptiles with four extremities, but having taken up
the habit of moving along the earth and concealing
themselves among bushes, their bodies, owing to
repeated efforts to elongate themselves and to pass
through narrow spaces, have acquired a considerable
length out of all proportion to their width. Since
long feet would have been very useless, and short

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE.

117

feet would have been incapable of moving their
bodies, there resulted a cessation of use of these
parts, which has finally caused them to totally dis-
appear, although they were originally part of the
plan of organization in these animals." The discov-
ery of an efficient cause of modifications, which
Lamarck refers to the efforts of the creatures them-
selves, has placed his speculations in the museum of
biological curiosities; but sharp controversy rages
to-day over the question raised in Lamarck's fourth
proposition, namely, the transmission of characters
acquired by the parent during its lifetime to the
ofifspring. This burning question between Weismann
and his opponents, involving the serious problem of
heredity, will remain unsettled till a long series of
observations supply material for judgment.

Lamarck, poor, neglected, and blind in his old
age, died in 1829. Both Cuvier, who ridiculed him,
and Goethe, who never heard of him, passed away
three years later. The year following his death, when
Darwin was an undergraduate at Cambridge, Lyell
published his Principles of Geology, a work destined
to assist in paving the way for the removal of one
difficulty attending the solution of the theory of the
origin of species, namely, the vast period of time for
the life-history of the globe which that theory de-
mands. As Lyell, however, was then a believer —
although, like a few others of his time, of wavering
type — in the fixity of species, he had other aims in
view than those to which his book contributed. But

Il8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

he wrote with an open mind, not being, as Herbert
Spencer says of Hugh Miller, '' a theologian study-
ing geology." Following the theories of uniformity
of action laid down by Hutton, by Buffon, and by
that industrious surveyor, William Smith, who trav-
elled the length and breadth of England, mapping
out the sequence of the rocks, and tabulating the
fossils special to each stratum, Lyell demonstrated
in detail that the formation and features of the earth's
crust are explained by the operation of causes still
active. He was one among others, each working
independently at diflferent branches of research;
each, unwittingly, collecting evidence which would
help to demoHsh old ideas, and support new theories.
A year after the Principles of Geology appeared,
there crept unnoticed into the world a treatise, by
one Patrick Matthew, on Naval Timber and Arbori-
culture, under which unexciting title Darwin's theory
was anticipated. Of this, however, as of a still earHer
anticipation, more presently. About this period Von
Baer, in examining the embryos of animals, showed
that creatures so unlike one another in their adult
state as fishes, lizards, lions, and men, resemble one
another so closely in the earHer stages of their de-
velopment that no differences can be detected be-
tween them. But Von Baer was himself anticipated
by Meckel, who wrote as follows in 1811 : " There is
no good physiologist who has not been struck, in-
cidentally, by the observation that the original form
of all organisms is one and the same, and that out

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE.

119

of this one form, all, the lowest as well as the highest,
are developed in such a manner that the latter pass
through the permanent forms of the former as transi-
tory stages " (Osborn's From the Greeks to Darwin,
p. 212). In botany Conrad Sprengel, who belongs
to the eighteenth century, had shown the work ef-
fected by insects in the fertilization of plants. Fol-
lowing his researches, Robert Brown made clear the
mode of the development of plants, and Sir William
Hooker traced their habits and geographical distri-
bution. Von Mohl discovered that material basis
of both plant and animal which he named " proto-
plasm." In 1844, nine years before Von Mohl told
the story of the building-up of life from a seemingly
structureless jelly, a book appeared which critics of
the time charged with " poisoning the fountains of
science, and sapping the foundations of religion."
This was the once famous Vestiges of Creation, ac-
knowledged after his death as the work of Robert
Chambers, in which the origin and movements of
the solar system were explained as determined by
uniform laws, themselves the expression of Divine
power. Organisms, "from the simplest and oldest,
up to the highest and most recent," were the result
of an " inherent impulse imparted by the Almighty
both to advance them from the several grades and
modify their structure as circumstances required."
Although now referred to only as " marking time "
in the history of the theory of Evolution, the book
created a sensation which died away only some years

120 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

after its publication. Darwin remarks upon it in his
Historical Sketch that although displaying " in the
earlier editions little accurate knowledge and a great
want of scientific knowledge, it did excellent service
in this country in calling attention to the subject, in
removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the
ground for the reception of analogous views."

Three years after the Vestiges, there was, al-
though none then knew it, or knowing the fact, would
have admitted it, more " sapping of the foundations "
of orthodox beHef, when M. Boucher de Perthes ex-
hibited some rudely-shaped flint implements which
had been found at intervals in hitherto undisturbed
deposits of sand and gravel — old river beds — in the
Somme valley, near Abbeville, in Picardy. For these
rough stone tools and weapons, being of human
workmanship, evidenced the existence of savage
races of men in Europe in a dim and dateless past,
and went far to refute the theories of his paradisiacal
state on that memorable " 23 October, 4004 b. c,"
when, according to Dr. Lightfoot's reckoning (see
p. 95), Adam was created. While the pickaxe, in
disturbing flint knives and spearheads, that had lain
for countless ages, was disturbing much besides,
English and German philosophers were formulating
the imposing theory which, under the name of the
Conservation of Energy, makes clear the indestructi-
bility of both matter and motion. Then, to com-
plete the work of preparation effected by the dis-
coveries now briefly outHned, there appeared, in a

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE. 12 1

now defunct newspaper, the Leader, in its issue of
20th of March, 1852, an article by Herbert Spencer
on the Development Hypothesis, in which the fol-
lowing striking passage occurs : " Those who cava-
lierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not ade-
quately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that
their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like
the majority of men who are born to a given belief,
they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse
belief, but assume that their own needs none. Here
we find, scattered over the globe, vegetable and ani-
mal organisms numbering, of the one kind (accord-
ing to Humboldt) some 320,000 species, and of the
other, some 2,000,000 species (see Carpenter); and
if to these we add the numbers of animal and vege-
table species that have become extinct, we may safely
estimate the number of species that have existed,
and are existing, on the earth, at not less than ten
millions. Well, which is the most rational theory
about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely
that there have been ten millions of special creations?
or is it most likely that by continual modifications,
due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varie-
ties have been produced, as varieties are being pro-
duced still? . . . Even could the supporters of the
Development Hypothesis merely show that the origi-
nation of species by the process of modification is
conceivable, they would be in a better position than
their opponents. But they can do much more than
this. They can show that the process of modification
9

122 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

has effected, and is effecting, decided changes in all
organisms subject to modifying influences. . . . They
can show that in successive generations these changes
continue, until ultimately the new conditions become
the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated
plants, domesticated animals, and in the several races
of men, such alterations have taken place. They
can show that the degrees of difference so produced
are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which
distinctions of species are in other cases founded.
They can show, too, that the changes daily taking
place in ourselves — the facility that attends long
practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when
practice ceases — the strengthening of passions habit-
ually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually
curbed — the development of every faculty, bodily,
moral, or intellectual, according to the use made of
it — are all explicable on this same principle. And
thus they can show that throughout all organic na-
ture there is at work a modifying influence of the
kind they assign as the cause of these specific dif-
ferences; an influence which, though slow in its
action, does, in time, if the circumstances demand it,
produce marked changes — an influence which, to all
appearance, would produce in the millions of years,
and under the great varieties of condition which geo-
logical records imply, any amount of change."

This quotation shows, as perhaps no other refer-
ence might show, how, by the middle of the present
century, science was trembling on the verge of dis-

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE,

123

covery of that " modifying influence " of which Mr.
Spencer speaks. That discovery made clear how all
that had preceded it not only contributed thereto, but
gained a significance and value which, apart from it,
could not have been secured. When the relation of
the several parts to the whole became manifest, each
fell into its place like the pieces of a child's puzzle
map.

Leading Men of Science.

A. D. 800 TO A. D. 1800.

Name.

Geber (Djafer).
Avicenna (Ibu Sina).

Averroes (Ibu
Roshd).

Roger Bacon.

Christopher Colum-
bus.
Vasco de Gama.

Ferdinand Magel-
lan,

Nicholas Coperni-
cus.

Andreas Vesalius.
Conrad Gesner.

Andrew Caesalpino.

Tycho Brahe.

Place and date
of birth.

Mesopotamia,

830.
Bokhara, 980.

Spain, 1 126.

Ilchester, 1214.

Genoa, 1445,

Sines, 1469.
(Portugal.)
Ville de Sabro-

za, 1470.
Thorn, 1473.
(Prussia.)

Brussels, 15 14.
Zurich, 1516.

Arezzo, 15 19.

(Tuscany.)

Knudstrup,

1546.
(Sweden.)

Died.

1037

1198

1292
1506

1525
1521

1543

1564
1565

1603
1601

Speciality.

Earliest known Chem-
ist.

Expositor of Aristotle;
Physician and Geol-
ogist.

Translator and Com-
mentator of Aris-
totle.

First English Experi-
mentalist.

Discoverer of Amer-
ica, 1492.

Sailed round the South
of Africa, 1497.

Circumnavigator of
the Globe, 15 19.

Discoverer of the Sun
as the Centre of our
System.

Human Anatomist.

Classification of

Plants and Animals.

Comparative Botan-
ist.

Collector of Astro-
nomical Data.

124

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Name.

Place and date
of birth.

Died.

Speciality.

Giordano Bruno.

Nola, 1550.

1600

Expounder of the Co-
pemican System
and Philosopher.

Francis, Lord Ba-

London, 1561.

1626

Expounder of the In-

con.

ductive Philosophy.

Galileo Galilei.

Pisa, 1564.

1642

Numerous Astronom-
ical Discoveries.

Johann Kepler.

Wiirtemburg,

1630

Discoverer of the

1571-

Three Laws of Plan-
etary Movements.

Thomas Hobbes.

Malmesbury,

1679

One of the Founders

1588.

of Modern Ethics.

Rene Descartes.

LaHaye, 1596.

1650

Resolution of all Phe-

(Touraine.)

nomena into Terms
of Matter and Mo-
tion. (Dualism.)

Benedict Spinoza.

Amsterdam,

1677

Resolution of all Phe-

1632.

nomena into Terms
of Substance = God.
(Monism.)

John Locke.

Wrington,

1632.
(Somerset.)

1704

Moral Philosopher.

Gottfrid Wilhelm

Leipsic, 1646.

1716

Philosopher and Math-

Leibnitz.

ematician.

Sir Isaac Newton.

Woolsthorpe,

1727

Expounder of the Law

1642.

of Gravitation.

(Lincoln.)

Edmund Halley.

London, 1656.

1 741

Astronomer.

David Hartley.

Illingworth,
1705.

1757

Psychology of Man.

Carl von Linnaeus.

Roeshult, 1707.

1778

Systematic Botany and

(Sweden.)

Zoology.

Count de Buffon.

Burgundy,

1788

Contributions from Bi-

1707.

ology toward The-
ory of Evolution
and Geology.

David Hume.

Edinburgh,

1776

Philosophy of the An-

1711.

ti-supernatural ; all
Science Converging
in Man.

Immanuel Kant.

Konigsberg,

1804

Formulator of the

1724.

Nebular Theory.

James Hutton.

Edinburgh,

1797

Geologist : Uniformi-

1726.

tarian.

THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE.

125

Name.

Place and date
of birth.

Died.

Speciality.

Erasmus Darwin.

Elton, 1731.
(Lincolnshire.)

1802

{^See BuFFON.)

Sir William Her-

Hanover, 1738.

1822

Astronomer.

schel.

Jean Baptiste La-

Bazantium,

1829

Biologist : Contribu-

marck.

1744.

tions against tixity
of Species.

Marquis de La-

Beaumont-en-

1827

Expounder of the

place.

Ange, 1749.

Nebular Theory.

Conrad Sprengel.

Pomerania,
1766.

1833

Botanist.

John Dalton.

Eaglesfield,

1844

Formulator of the

1767,

Modern Atomic

(Cumberland.)

Theory.

Baron Cuvier.

Montbeliard,

1832

Palaeontologist and

1769.

Anatomist.

Geoff. St. Hilaire.

Etampes, 1772.

T844

Zoologist.

Alexan der von

Berlin, 1769.

1859

Explorer.

Humboldt.

William Smith.

Churchill, 1769.

1840

Geologist : mapped

(Oxon.)

Strata of Great
Britain.

Boucher de Perthes.

1788.

1868

Discoverer of Evi-
dences of Man's
Antiquity.

Botanist.

Sir William Hooker.

Norwich, 1785.

1865

Sir Charles Lyell.

Kinnordy,

1875

Geologist : developed

1797.

Hutton's Theory.

(Forfarshire.)

Ernst von Baer.

Esthonia, 1792.

1876

Embryologist : Law of
Organic Develop-
ment.

Sir Richard Owen.

Lancaster,
1804.

1892

Palaeontologist.

Hugo von Mohl.

Germany, 1805.

1872

Discoverer of Proto-
plasm.

Theodor Schwann.

Neuss, 1810.

1882

Founder of the Cell

(Prussia.)

Theory.

Hermann von Helm-

Potsdam, 1821.

1894

Formulator of the

holtz.

Doctrine of the
Conservation of En-

1

ergy.

PART IV,

MODERN EVOLUTION.

I. Darwin and Wallace.

We have to deal with Man as a product of Evolution ; with Society
as a product of Evolution ; and with Moral Phenomena as prod-
ucts of Evolution. — Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics,
§ 193.

Charles Robert Darwin (the second name was
rarely used by him) was born at Shrewsbury on the
1 2th of February, 1809. He came of a long line of
Lincolnshire yeomen, whose forbears spelt the name
variously, as Darwen, Derwent, and Darwynne, per-
haps deriving it from the river of kindred name.
His father was a kindly, prosperous doctor, of suf-
ficient scientific reputation to secure his election into
the Royal Society, although that coveted honour
was then more easily obtained than now. Of the
more famous grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, the re-
minder suffices that both his prose and poetry were
vehicles of suggestive speculations on the develop-
ment of life-forms. DeaHng with bald facts and dates
for clearance of what follows, it may be added that
Charles Darwin was educated at the Grammar
School of his native town; that he passed thence to
Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities; was occu-
pied as volunteer naturalist on board the Beagle from

126

MODERN EVOLUTION,

127

December, 1831, till October, 1836; that he pub-
lished his epoch-making Origin of Species in No-
vember, 1859; and that he was buried by the side
of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey on the
26th of April, 1882.

As with not a few other men of " light and lead-
ing," neither school nor university did much for him,
nor did his boyhood give indication of future great-
ness. In his answers to the series of questions ad-
dressed to various scientific men in 1873 by his dis-
tinguished cousin, Francis Galton, he says : " I con-
sider that all I have learnt of any value has been
self-taught," and he adds that his education fostered
no methods of observation or reasoning. Of the
Shrewsbury Grammar School, where, after the death
of his mother (daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the
celebrated potter), in his ninth year, he was placed
as a boarder till his sixteenth year, he tells us, in the
modest and candid Autobiography printed in the
Life and Letters, "' nothing could have been worse
for the development of my mind." All that he was
taught were the classics, and a little ancient geog-
raphy and history; no mathematics, and no modern
languages. Happily, he had inherited a taste for
natural history and for collecting, his spoils includ-
ing not only shells and plants, but also coins and
seals. When the fact that he helped his brother in
chemical experiments became known to Dr. Butler,
the head-master, that desiccated pedagogue publicly
rebuked him " for wasting time on such useless sub-

128 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

jects." Then his father, angry at finding that he was
doing no good at school, reproved him for caring
for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and
declared that he would be a disgrace to the family!
He sent him to Edinburgh University with his
brother to study medicine, but Darwin found the
dulness of the lectures intolerable, and the sight of
blood sickened him, as it did his father. Although
the effect of the " incredibly " dry lectures on geology
made him — the future Secretary of the Geological
Society! — vow never to read a book on the science,
or in any way study it, his interest in biological sub-
jects grew, and its first fruits were shown in a paper
read before the Plinian Society at Edinburgh in 1826,
in which he reported his discovery that the so-called
ova of Flustra, or the sea-mat, were larvae.

But his father had to accept the fact that Darwin
disHked the idea of being a doctor, and fearing that
he would degenerate into an idle sporting man, pro-
posed that he should become a clergyman! Darwin
says upon this: —

I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had
heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring
my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England, though
otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman.
Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed, and a few
other books on divinity; and, as I did not then in the least
doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I
soon persuaded myself that our creed must be fully accepted.
Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox,
it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman.
Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formally

MODERN EVOLUTION,

129

given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge,
I joined the Beagle as naturalist. If the phrenologists are to
be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be a clergyman.
A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological
society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of my-
self ; and some time afterwards I received the proceedings of
one of the meetings, in which it seemed that the shape of my
head had been the subject of a public discussion, and one of
the speakers declared that I had the bump of reverence devel-
oped enough for ten priests.

The result was that early in 1828 Darwin went
to Cambridge, the three years spent at which were
" time wasted, as far as the academical studies were
concerned." His passion for shooting and hunting
led him into a sporting, card-playing, drinking com-
pany, but science was his redemption. No pursuit
gave him so much pleasure as collecting beetles, of
his zeal in which the following is an example : " One
day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare
beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a
third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose,
so I popped the one which I held in my right hand
into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely
acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was
forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was
the third one."

Happily for his ftiture career, and therefore for
the interests of science, Darwin became intimate with
men like Whewell, Henslow, and Sedgwick, while the
reading of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, and of
Sir John Herschel's Introduction to Natural Phi-

I30

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

losophy, stirred up in him " a burning zeal to add
even the most humble contribution to the noble
structure of Natural Science." The vow to eschew
geology was quickly broken when he came under
the spell of Sedgwick's influence, but it was the
friendship of Henslow that determined his after
career, and prevented him from becoming the " Rev.
Charles Darwin." For on his return from a geo-
logical tour in Wales with Sedgwick he found a letter
from Henslow awaiting him, the purport of which
is in the following extract: —

'' I have been asked by Peacock (Lowndean
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge) to recom-
mend him a naturalist as companion to Captain
Fitz-Roy, employed by Government to survey the
southern extremity of America. I have stated that
I consider you to be the best- qualified person I know
of who is likely to undertake such a situation."

In connection with this the following memoran-
dum from Darwin's pocket-book of 1831 is of in-
terest:— " Returned to Shrewsbury at end of August.
Refused ofifer of voyage."

This refusal was given at the instance of his
father, who objected to the scheme as " wild and
unsettling, and as disreputable to his character as a
clergyman " ; but he soon yielded on the advice of
his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, and on Dar-
win's plea that he " should be deuced clever to spend
more than his allowance whilst on board the Beagle."
On this his father answered with a smile, " But they

MODERN EVOLUTION.

131

tell me you are very clever." It is amusing to find
that Darwin narrowly escaped being rejected by
Fitz-Roy, who, as a disciple of Lavater, doubted
whether a man with such a nose as Darwin's " could
possess sufficient energy and determination for the
voyage."

The details of that voyage, the first of the two
memorable events in Darwin's otherwise unadventur-
ous life, are set down in delightful narrative in his
Naturalist's Voyage Round the World, and it will
suffice to quote a passage from the autobiography
bearing on the significance of the materials collected
during his five years' absence.

During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply im-
pressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil
animals covered with armour like that on the existing arma-
dillos ; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals
replace one another in proceeding southwards over the con-
tinent ; and thirdly, by the South American character of most
of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more
especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each
island of the group, none of the islands appearing to be very
ancient in a geological sense. It was evident that such facts
as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on
the supposition that species gradually became modified ; and
the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that
" none of the evolutionary theories then current in the scien-
tific world " could account for the innumerable cases in which
organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits
of life. ... I had always been much struck by such adapta-
tions, and until these could be explained, it seemed to me
almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that
species have been modified. ... In October, 1838, that is,

132

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I hap-
pened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being
well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which
everywhere goes on, from long-continued observations of the
habits of plants and animals, it at once struck me that under
these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be
preserved, and unfavourable ones destroyed. The result of
this would be the formation of new species.

Shortly after his return he settled in London, pre-
pared his journal and manuscripts of observations for
pubHcation, and opened, he says, under date of July,
1837, " my first note-book for facts in relation to the
origin of species, about which I had long reflected,
and never ceased working for the next twenty years."
He acted for two years as one of the honorary secre-
taries of the Geological Society, which brought him
into close relations with Lyell, and, as his health
then allowed him to go into society, he saw a good
deal of prominent literary and scientific contem-
poraries.

In the autumn of 1842, two years and eight
months after his marriage with his first cousin,
Emma Wedgwood, who died in October last (1896),
Darwin removed from London, the air and social
demands of which were alike unsuited to his health,
and finally fixed upon a house in the secluded village
of Down, near Beckenham, where he spent the rest
of his days. Henceforth the life of Darwin is merged
in the books in which, from time to time, he gave
the result of his long years of patient observation
and inquiry, from the epoch-making Origin to the

MODERN EVOLUTION,

"^Zl

monograph on earthworms. With bad health, ap-
parently due to gouty tendencies aggravated by
chronic sea-sickness during his voyage; with nights
that never gave unbroken sleep; and days that were
never passed without prostrating pain; he might
well have felt justified in doing nothing whatever.
But he was saved from the accursed monotony of a
wealthy invalid's Hfe by his insatiate delight in
searching for that solution of the problem of the
mutability of species which time would not fail to
bring. In this, he tells us, he forgot his " daily dis-
comfort," and thus was delivered from morbid intro-
spection.

Darwin worked at his rough notes on the varia-
tion of animals and plants under domestication, add-
ing facts collected by " printed enquiries, by con-
versations with skilful breeders and gardeners, and
by extensive reading," gleams of light coming till
he says that he is " almost convinced that species
are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable."
But he was still groping in the dark as to the appH-
cation of selection to wild plants and animals, until,
as remarked above, the chance reading of Malthus
suggested a working theory. A brief sketch of this
theory, written out in pencil in 1842, was elaborated
in 1844 into an essay of two hundred and thirty
pages. The importance attached to this was shown
in a letter which Darwin then addressed to his wife,
charging her, in the event of his death, to apply
£400 to the expense of publication. He also named

134

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

certain competent men from whom an editor might
be chosen, preference being given to Sir Charles
(then Mr. Lyell, at whose advice Darwin began to
write out his views on a scale three or four times as
extensive as that in which they appeared in the
Origin of Species. Their publication in an abstract
form was hastened by the receipt, in June, 1858, of
a paper, containing " exactly the same theory," from
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace at Ternate in the
Moluccas. This reference to that distinguished ex-
plorer, will, before the story of the coincident dis-
covery is further told, fitly introduce a sketch of his
career.

Alfred Russel Wallace was born at Usk, in
Monmouthshire, on the 8th of January, 1823. He was
educated at Hereford Grammar School, and in his
fourteenth year began the study of land-surveying
and architecture under an elder brother. Quick-
witted and observing, he studied a great deal more
on his own account in his journeyings over England
and Wales, the results of which abide in the wide
range of subjects — scientific, political, and social —
engaging his active pen from early manhood to the
present day.

About 1844 he exchanged the theodolite for the
ferule, and became EngHsh master in the Collegiate
School at Leicester, in which town he found a con-
genial friend in the person of his future fellow-trav-
eller, Henry Walter Bates. Bates was then employed
in his father's hosiery warehouse, from which he

MODERN EVOLUTION.

^35

escaped, as often as the long working hours then
prevaiHng allowed, into the fields with his collecting-
box. Both schoolmaster and shopman were ardent
naturalists, Mr. Wallace, as he tells us, being at that
time " chiefly interested in botany," but he after-
ward took up his friend's favourite pursuit of
entomology. The writer, when preparing his memoir
of Bates (which prefaces a reprint of the first edition
of the delightful Naturalist on the Amazons), learned
from Mr. Wallace that in early life he did not keep
letters from Bates and other correspondents. But,
fortunately, among Bates's papers, there was a
bundle of interesting letters from Wallace written
between June, 1845, and October, 1847, from Neath,
in South Wales, to which town he had removed.
In one of these, dated the 9th of November, 1845,
Wallace asks Bates if he had read the Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation, and a subsequent letter
indicates that Bates had not formed a favourable
opinion of the book. A later letter is interesting
as conveying an estimate of Darwin. " I first," Wal-
lace says, " read Darwin's Journal three or four years
back, and have lately re-read it. As the journal of
a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt's
Personal Narrative; as a work of general interest,
perhaps superor to it. He is an ardent admirer and
most able supporter of Mr. Lyell's views. His style
of writing I very much admire, so free from all
labour, affectation, or egotism, yet so full of interest
and original thought."

136 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

But, of still greater moment, is a letter in which
Wallace tells Bates that he begins " to feel dissatis-
fied with a mere local collection. I should like to
take some one family to study thoroughly, princi-
pally with a view to the theory of the origin of
species." The two friends had often discussed
schemes for going abroad to explore some virgin
region, nor could their scanty means prevent the
fulfilment of a scheme which has enriched both sci-
ence and the literature of travel. The choice of
country to explore was settled by Wallace's perusal
of a little book entitled A Voyage up the River
Amazons, including a Residence in Para, by W. H.
Edwards, an American tourist, published in Murray's
Family Library, in 1847. ^^ the autumn of that
year Wallace proposed a joint expedition to the
river Amazons for the purpose of exploring the
Natural History of its banks; the plan being to
make a collection of objects, dispose of the dupH-
cates in London to pay expenses, and gather facts,
as Mr. Wallace expressed it in one of his letters,
" towards solving the problem of the origin of
species."

The choice was a happy one, for, except by the
German zoologist Von Spix, and the botanist Von
Martins in 1817-20, and subsequently by Count de
Castelnau, no exploration of a region so rich and
interesting to the biologist had been attempted.
Early in 1848 Bates and Wallace met in London
to study South American animals and plants in the

MODERN EVOLUTION.

137

principal collections, and afterward went to Chats-
worth to gain information about orchids, which they
proposed to collect in the moist tropical forests and
send home.

On 26th of April, 1848, they embarked at Liver-
pool in a barque of only 192 tons burden, one of the
few ships then trading to Para, to which seaport of
the Amazons region a swift passage, " straight as
an arrow," brought them on 28th of May.

The travellers soon settled in a rocmha, or
country-house, a mile and half from Para, and close
to the forest, which came down to their doors. Like
other towns along the Amazons, Para stands on
ground cleared from the forest that stretches, a well-
nigh pathless jungle of luxuriant primeval vegeta-
tion, two thousand miles inland. In that paradise of
the naturalist, the collectors gathered consignments
which met with ready sale in London, and thus
spent a couple of years in pursuits moderately re-
munerative and wholly pleasurable, till, on reach-
ing Barra, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, one thou-
sand miles from Para, in March, 1850, Bates and
Wallace, who was accompanied by his younger
brother, parted company, " finding it more conven-
ient to explore separate districts and collect inde-
pendently." Wallace took the northern parts and
tributaries of the Amazons, and Bates kept to the
main stream, which, from the direction it seems to
take at the fork of the Rio Negro, is called the Upper
Amazons or the SoHmoens. Different in character
10

138 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. ^

and climatic conditions from the Lower Amazons, it
flows through a *' vast plain about a thousand miles
in length, and five hundred or six hundred miles in
breadth covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious,
and humid forest." Bates stayed in the country till
June, 1859, but Wallace left in 1852, and in the
following year published an account of his journey
under the title of Travels on the Amazon and Rio
Negro. That book was written under the serious
disadvantage of the destruction of the greater part
of the notes and specimens by the burning of the
ship in which Mr. Wallace took passage on his home-
ward voyage. That it remains one of the select com-
pany of works of travel for which demand is continu-
ous is evidenced in a reprint which appeared in 1891.
If it affords few hints of the author's bent of mind
toward the question of the origin of species, it shows
what interest was being aroused within him over the
allied subject of the geographical distribution of
plants and animals which Mr. Wallace was to make
so markedly his own.

In 1854 he sailed for the Malay Archipelago,
where nearly eight years were spent in exploring the
region from Sumatra to New Guinea. The large
and varied outcome of that labour was embodied in
numerous papers communicated to learned societies
and scientific journals, and in a series of delightful
books from The Malay Archipelago, first published
in 1869, to Island Life, published in 1880. Among
the minor results of his extensive travels — for all

MODERN EVOLUTION.

139

else that Wallace did pales before the great discovery
which links his name with Darwin's — was the estab-
lishment of a line, known as '' Wallace's," which
divides the Malay Archipelago into two main groups,
" Indo-Malaysia and Austro-Malaysia, marked by
distinct species and groups of animals." That line
runs through a deep channel separating the islands
of Bali and Lombok; the plants and animals on
which, although but fifteen miles of water separate
them, differ from each other even more than do the
islands of Great Britain and Japan. " A similar
line, but somewhat farther east, divides on the whole
the Malay from the Papuan races of man."

Among the more fugitive contributions which
mark Mr. Wallace's approach to a solution of the
problem in quest of which he and Bates went to the
Amazons is a paper On the Law which has Regu-
lated the Introduction of New Species, published in
the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1855.
In this he shows that some form of evolution of one
species from another is needed to explain the geo-
logical and geographical facts of which examples are
given.

In the interesting preface to the reprint of the
famous paper On the Tendencies of Varieties to de-
part Indefinitely from the Original Type, Mr. Wal-
lace recites the several researches which he made in
quest of that '' form " till, when lying ill with fever at
Ternate, in February, 1858, something led him to
think of the " positive checks " described by Malthus

I40

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

in his Essay on Population, a book which he had
read some years before. Oddly enough, therefore,
the honours lie with the maligned Haileybury Rev-
erend Professor of Political Economy in furnishing
both Darwin and Wallace with the clue. The " posi-
tive checks " — war, disease, famine — Wallace felt
must act even more effectively on the lower animals
than on man, because of their more rapid rate of
multiplication. And he tells us, in the prefatory
note to a reprint of his paper, " there suddenly
flashed on me the idea of the survival of the fittest,
and in the two hours that elapsed before my ague
fit was over I had thought out the whole of the
theory, and in the two succeeding evenings wrote it
out in full and sent it by the next post to Mr. Dar-
win," asking him, if he thought well of the essay, to
send it to Lyell. This Darwin did with the following
remarks: " Your words have come true with a ven-
geance— that I should be forestalled. ... I never
saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had
my MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have
made a better short abstract! Even his terms now
stand as heads of my chapters. Please return me the
MS., which he does not say he wishes me to publish;
but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send
to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it
may amount to, will be smashed, though my book,
if it will ever have any value, will not be deteriorated,
as all the labour consists in the application of the
theory." Darwin came out well in this business.

MODERN EVOLUTION,

141

For to have hit upon a theory which interprets so
large a question as the origin and causes of modifica-
tion of Hfe-forms; to keep on turning it over and
over again in the mind for twenty long years; to
spend the working hours of every day in collection
and verification of facts for and against it; and then
to have another man launching a " bolt from the
blue " in the shape of a paper with exactly the same
theory, might well disturb even a philosopher of
Darwin's serenity.

However, both Hooker and Lyell had read his
sketch a dozen years before, and it was arranged by
them, not as considering claims of priority, which
have too often been occasion of unworthy wrangling,
but in the '' interests of science generally," that an
abstract of Darwin's manuscript should be read with
Wallace's paper at a meeting of the Linnsean Society
on the 1st of July, 1858. The full title of the joint com-
munication was On the Tendency of Species to form
Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and
Species by Natural Selection. Sir Joseph Hooker,
describing the gathering, says that " the interest ex-
cited was intense, but the subject was too novel and
too ominous for the old school to enter the lists be-
fore armouring. After the meeting it was talked
over with bated breath. Lyell's approval, and per-
haps, in a small way mine, as his lieutenant in the
affair, rather overawed the Fellows, who would
otherwise have flown out against the doctrine. We
had, too, the vantage ground of being familiar with

142 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the authors and their theme." Nothing can deprive
Mr. Wallace of the honour due to him as the co-
originator of the theory, which, regarded in its appli-
cation to the origin, history, and destiny of man, in-
volves the most momentous changes in belief, and
there may be fitly quoted here his own modest and,
doubtless, correct, assessment of limitations which in
no wise invalidate his high claims. In the Preface
to his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selec-
tion (1870), Mr. Wallace says the book will prove
that he both saw at the time the value and scope of
the law which he had discovered, and has since been
able to apply to some purpose in a few original lines
of investigation. *' But," he adds, " here my claims
cease. I have felt all my life, and I still feel, the
most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been
at work long before me, and that it was not left for
me to attempt to write the Origin of Species. I
have long since measured my own strength, and
know full well that it would be quite unequal to
that task. Far abler men than myself may confess
that they have not that untiring patience in accumu-
lating, and that wonderful skill in using, large masses
of facts of the most varied kind — that wide and
accurate physiological knowledge — that acuteness in
devising and skill in carrying out experiments, and
that admirable style of composition at once clear,
persuasive, and judicial — qualities which, in their
harmonious combination, mark out Mr. Darwin as
the man, perhaps of all men now living, best fitted

MODERN EVOLUTION, 1 43

for the great work he has undertaken and accom-
plished."

In a letter to Wallace dated 20th April, 1870,
Darwin says, " There has never been passed on me,
or, indeed, on any one, a higher eulogium than yours.
I wish that I fully deserved it. Your modesty and
candour are very far from new to rfie. I hope it is
a satisfaction to you to reflect — and very few things
in my life have been more satisfactory to me — that
we have never felt any jealousy towards each other,
though in one sense rivals. I believe I can say this
of myself with truth, and I am absolutely sure it is
true of you."

But on one question, and that round which dis-
cussion still rages, the friends were poles asunder.
There had been correspondence between them as
to the bearing of the theory of natural selection on
man, and in April, 1869, Darwin wrote, " As you
expected, I differ grievously from you, and I am
very sorry for it. I can see no necessity for calling
in an additional and proximate cause in regard to
man." In the fifteenth chapter of his comprehensive
book on Darwinism, Wallace admits the action of
natural selection in man's physical structure. This
structure classes him among the vertebrates; the
mode of human suckling classes him among the
mammals; his blood, his muscles, and his nerves,
the structure of his heart with its veins and arteries,
his lungs and his whole respiratory and circulatory

144

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

systems, all closely correspond to those of other
mammals, and are often almost identical with them.
He possesses the same number of limbs, terminating
in the same number of digits, as belong fundamental-
ly to the mammals. His senses are identical with
theirs, and his organs of sense are the same in num-
ber and occupy the same relative position. Every
detail of structure which is common to the mammalia
as a class is found also in man, while he differs from
them only in such ways and degrees as the various
species or groups of mammals differ from each other.
He is, like them, begotten by sexual conjugation;
like them, developed from a fertilized ^%'g, and in
his embryonic condition passes through stages re-
capitulating the variety of enormously remote an-
cestors of whom he is the perfected descendant.
Full-grown, he appears as most nearly allied to the
anthropoid or man-like apes; so much does his
skeleton resemble theirs that, comparing him with
the chimpanzee, we find, with very few exceptions,
bone for bone, differing only in size, arrangement,
and proportion.

Mr. Wallace, therefore, rejected the idea of man's
special creation '' as being entirely unsupported by
facts, as well as in the highest degree improbable."
But he would not allow that natural selection explains
the origin of man's spiritual and intellectual nature.
These, he argues, " must have had another origin,
and for this origin we can only find an adequate
cause in the unseen universe of Spirit." More de-

MODERN EVOLUTION. 145

tailed treatment of this argument will be given fur-
ther on; here reference is made to it as furnishing
the explanation why Mr. Wallace kept not his '' first
estate," and dropped out of the ranks of Pioneers of
Evolution. Many subjects, as hinted above, have
occupied his facile pen — land nationalization, causes
of depression in trade, labourers' allotments, vaccina-
tion, et hoc genus omne; showing, at least, the promi-
nence which all social matters occupy in the minds of
the leading exponents of the theory of Evolution.
For of this, as will be seen, both Herbert Spencer
and Huxley supply cogent examples in their applica-
tion of that theory to human interests. But it is as a
defender, although on lines of his own not wholly
orthodox, of supernaturalism, with attendant beliefs
in miracles and the grosser forms of spiritualism,
that Mr. Wallace appears in the character of oppo-
nent to the inclusion of man's psychical nature as a
product of Evolution.

The arresting influence of these views when
backed by honest, sincere, and eminent men of the
type of Mr. Wallace, and w^hen also supported by
several prominent men of science, renders it desirable
to show that modern psychism is but savage animism
'' writ large," and wholly explicable on the theory of
continuity. In his book on Miracles and Modern
Spiritualism, of which a revised edition, with chapters
on Apparitions and Phantasms, was issued in 1895,
Mr. Wallace contends that " Spiritualism, if true,
furnishes such proofs of the existence of ethereal

146 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

beings and of their power to act upon matter, as
must revolutionise philosophy. It demonstrates the
actuality of forms of matter and modes of being be-
fore inconceivable; it demonstrates mind without
brain, and intelligence disconnected from what we
know as the material body; and it thus cuts away all
presumption against our continued existence after
the physical body is disorganised and dissolved. Yet
more, it demonstrates, as completely as the fact can
be demonstrated, that the so-called dead are still
alive; that our friends are still with us, though un-
seen, and guide and strengthen us when, owing to
absence of proper conditions, they cannot make their
presence known. It thus furnishes a proof of a future
life which so many crave, and for want of which so
many live and die in anxious doubt, so many in posi-
tive disbelief. It substitutes a definite, real, and prac-
tical conviction for a vague, theoretical, and unsatis-
fying faith. It furnishes actual knowledge on a
matter of vital importance to all men, and as to which
the wisest men and most advanced thinkers have
held, and still hold, that no knowledge was attain-
able."

This claim, this tremendous claim, on behalf of
the phenomena of spiritualism to supply an answer
to "the question of questions; the ascertainment of
man's relation to the universe of things ; whence our
race has come; to what goal we are tending," rests
on the assumption with which Mr. Wallace starts,
*' Spiritualism, if truer

MODERN EVOLUTION. 147

The essay from which the above passages are
quoted is preceded by references in detail to a con-
siderable number of cases of "the appearance of
preterhuman or spiritual beings," the evidence of
which " is as good and definite as it is possible for
any evidence of any fact to be." These ghost-stories,
contrasted with the full-flavoured eerie tales of old,
are feebly monotonous. The apparatus of the
medium is limited : the phenomena are largely of the
" horse-play " order. Through the whole series we
vainly seek for some ennobling and exalting concep-
tion of a life beyond, some ghmpses " behind the
veil," only to find that the shades are but diluted or
vulgarized parodies of ourselves ; or that " the filthy
are filthy still," like the departed bargee whose
" communicating intelligence " (we quote from a re-
cent book on spiritualism entitled The Great Secret)
was as coarse-mouthed as when in the flesh. In
considering, if it be deemed worth while, the evi-
dence of genuineness of the occurrences, we are
thrown, not on the honesty, but on the competency
of the witnesses. The most eminent among these
show themselves persons of undisciplined emotions.
The distinguished physicist. Professor Oliver Lodge,
who has been described to the writer by an intimate
friend of the Professor as " longing to believe some-
thing," argues that in dealing with psychical phenom-
ena, a hazy, muzzy state of mind is better than a
mind " keenly awake " and " on the spot " (see Ad-
dress to the Society for Psychical Research, Pro-

148 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

ceedings, part xxvi, pp. 14, 15). With this may be
compared a Mohammedan receipt for summoning
spirits given in Klunzinger's Upper Egypt (p. 386):
'' Fast seven days in a lonely place, and take incense
with you. Read a chapter looi times from the
Koran. That is the secret, and you will see inde-
scribable wonders ; drums will be beaten beside you,
and flags hoisted over your head, and you will see
spirits." Thus have the dreamy Oriental Moslem
and the self-hypnotized Western professor met to-
gether to elicit truth from trance.

Concerning the competence of Mr. Wallace him-
self to weigh, unbiassed, the evidence which comes
before him, it suffices to cite the case of Eusapia
Paladino, a Neapolitan " medium," who, in the words
of one of her most ardent dupes, became " the un-
expected instrument of driving conviction as to the
reality of psychical manifestations by the invisible
into the minds of many scientists." A number of
distinguished savants testified to the genuineness of
the woman's performances in Professor Richet's cot-
tage on the He Roubant in the autumn of 1893. It
was the serious and complete conviction of all of
them (Lodge, Richet, Ochorowicz, and others) that
" on no single occasion during the occurrence of an
event recorded by them was a hand of Eusapia's free
to execute any trick whatever." Mr. Maskelyne, such
testimony notwithstanding, declared that the whole
business was " the sorriest of trickeries," and, to the
credit of the Society for Psychical Research, it under-

MODERN EVOLUTION.

149

took the expense of bringing Eusapia to England
for the purpose of testing the genuineness of her
doings. She was taken to a house in Cambridge,
and detected as a vulgar impostor. Yet Mr. Wallace,
in the new edition of his Miracles and Modern Spirit-
ualism, describes all the phenomena occurring at
Professor Richet's house as " not explicable as the
result of any known physical causes," and, in a sub-
sequent explanatory letter to the Daily Chronicle
of 24th of January, 1896, expresses the opinion that
*' the Cambridge experiments, so far as they are
recorded, only prove that Eusapia might have de-
ceived, not that she actually and consciously did so.''
The integrity of Mr. Wallace is not to be doubted,
but what becomes of his competence to judge when
prejudice bhnds itself to facts? Spirituahsm, if true,
demonstrates this and that about the unseen; but
spiritualism, proved to he untrue, lacks half the dex-
terity of an astute conjurer, and the whole of his
honesty. Every scientific man recognises the doc-
trine of the Conservation of Energy as a fundamental
canon. But with those who regard the phenomena
of Spiritualism as " not explicable " except by super-
natural causes, it would seem that that doctrine, as
also the not unimportant conditions of Time and
Space, count for nothing. When we read their re-
ports of the behaviour of mediums who project (of
course, in the dark) " abnormal temporary prolonga-
tions " like pseudopodia, we should feel alike de-
pressed and confounded were there not abundant

150 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

proofs what wholly untrustworthy observers scien-
tific specialists can be outside their own domain. As
the writer has remarked elsewhere, minds of this
type must be built in water-tight compartments.
They show how, even in the higher culture, the force
of a dominant idea may suspend or narcotize the
reason and judgment, and contribute to the rise and
spread of another of the epidemic delusions of which
history supplies warning examples.

They also show that man's senses have been his
arch-deceivers, and his preconceptions their abettors,
throughout human history; that advance has been
possible only as he has escaped through the disci-
pline of the intellect from the illusive impressions
about phenomena which the senses convey. Upon
this matter the words of the late Dr. Carpenter may
be quoted, words the more weighty because they are
the utterance of a man whose philosophy was influ-
enced by deep religious convictions: "With every
disposition to accept facts when I could once clearly
satisfy myself that they were facts, I have had to
come to the conclusion that whenever I have been
permitted to employ such tests as I should employ
in any scientific investigation, there was either inten-
tional deception on the part of interested persons, or
else self-deception on the part of persons who were
very sober-minded and rational upon all ordinary
affairs of life." He adds further: *' It has been my
business lately to inquire into the mental condition
of some of the individuals who have reported the

MODERN EVOLUTION. 151

most remarkable occurrences, I cannot — it would
not be fair — say all I could with regard to that men-
tal condition; but I can only say this, that it all fits
in perfectly well with the result of my previous
studies upon the subject, viz., that there is nothing
too strange to, be believed by those who have once
surrendered their judgment to the extent of accept-
ing as credible things which common sense tells us
are entirely incredible."

The fact abides that the great mass of super-
natural beliefs which have persisted from the lower
culture till now, and which are still held by an
overwhelming majority of civilized mankind, ar^ re-
ferable to causes concomitant with man's mental
development: causes operative throughout his his-
tory. The low intellectual environment of his
barbaric past was constant for thousands of years,
and his adaptation thereto was complete. The in-
trusion of the scientific method in its application to
man disturbed that equilibrium. But this, as yet,
only superficially. Like the foraminifera that persist
in the ocean depths, the great majority of mankind
have remained, but slightly, if at all, modified; thus
illustrating the truth of the doctrine of evolution in
their psychical history. (For that doctrine does not
imply all-round continuous advance. " Let us never
forget," Mr. Spencer says in Social Statics, " that the
law is — adaptation to circumstances, be they what
they may.") Therefore the superstitions that still
dominate the life of man, even in so-called civilized

152 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

centres, are no stumbling-blocks to us. They are
supports along the path of inquiry, because we ac-
count for their persistence. Thought and feeling
have a common base, because man is a unit, not a
duality. But the exercise of the one has been active
from the beginnings of his history — indeed we know
not at what point backward we can classify it as
human or quasi-human — while the other, speaking
comparatively, has but recently been called into play.
So far as its influence on the modern world goes,
may we not say that it began at least in the domain
of scientific naturalism with the Ionian philosophers?

, Emotionally, we are hundreds of thousands of years

\ old; rationally, we are embryos.

In other words, man wondered countless ages
before he reasoned; because feeling travels along
the line of least resistance, while thought, or the
challenge by inquiry — therefore the assumption that
there may be two sides to a question — must pursue
a path obstructed by the dominance of custom, the
force of imitation, and the strength of prejudice and
fear. It is here that anthropology, notably that
psychical branch of it comprehended under folk-lore,
takes up the cue from the momentous doctrine of
heredity; explains the persistence of the primitive;
and the causes of man's tardy escape from the illu-
sions of the senses, and the general conservatism of
human nature. "Born into life! in vain. Opinions,
those or these, unalter'd to retain the obstinate
mind decrees," as in the striking illustration cited in

MODERN EVOLUTION.

153

Heine's Travel-Pictures. " A few years ago Bullock
dug up an ancient stone idol in Mexico, and the
next day he found that it had been crowned during
the night with flowers. And yet the Spaniard had
exterminated the old Mexican religion with fire and
sword, and for three centuries had been engaged in
ploughing and harrowing their minds and implanting
the seed of Christianity." The causes of error and
delusion, and of the spiritual nightmares of olden
time, being made clear, there is begotten a generous
sympathy with that which empirical notions of
human nature attributed to wilfulness or to man's
fall from a high estate. Superstitions which are the
outcome of ignorance can only awaken pity. Where
the corrective of knowledge is absent, we see that
it could not be otherwise. Where that corrective
is present, but either perverted or not exercised, pity
is supplanted by blame. In either case, we learn that
the art of life largely consists in that control of the
emotions and that diversion of them into wholesome
channels, which the intellect, braced with the latest
knowledge, can alone effect.

Therefore, discarding theories of revelation,
spiritual illumination, and other assumed supra-
mundane sources of knowledge, sufficing causes of
abnormal mental phenomena are found in abnormal
working of the mental apparatus. The investiga-
tion of hallucinations (Lat. alucinor, to wander in
mind) leaves no doubt that they are the effect of a
morbid condition of that intricate, delicately poised

II

154

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

structure, the nervous system, under which objects
are seen and sensations felt when no corresponding
impression has been made through the medium of
the senses. When the nervous system is out of
gear, voices, whether divine or of the dead, may be
heard; and actual figures may be seen. A mental
image becomes a visual image; an imagined pain
a real pain, as the great physiologist, John Hunter,
testified when he said, " I am confident that I can
fix my attention to any part until I have a sensation
in that part." Shakespere portrays the like condition
when Macbeth attempts to clutch the dagger where-
with to stab Duncan:

There's no such thing ;
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes.

This abnormal state, which sees things having no
existence outside the " mind's eye," is no respecter
of persons; the savage and the civilized are alike
its victims. It may be organic or functional.
Organic, when disease is present; functional, through
excessive fatigue, lack of food or sleep, or derange-
ment of the digestive system, causing the patient,
as Hood says, " to think he's pious when he's only
bilious." Under such conditions, hallucinations of
all sorts possess the mind; hallucinations from which
the true peptic, who, as Carlyle says, " has no sys-
tem," is delivered. Only the mentally anaemic, the
emotionally overwrought, the unbalanced, and the
epileptic, are the victims, whether of the lofty illu-

MODERN EVOLUTION.

155

sions of august visions such as carried Saint Paul,
Saint Theresa, and Joan of Arc, into the presence
of the hoHest; or hallucination of drowned cat, thin
and " dripping with water," born of the disordered
nerves of Mrs. Gordon Jones. To quote from Dr.
Gower's Bowman Lecture (Nature, 4th July, 1895)
on Subjective Visual Sensations, such as accom-
pany fits, when, e. g., sensations of sight occur with-
out the retina being stimulated:

The spectra perceived before epileptic fits vary widely.
They may be stars or sparks, spherical luminous bodies, or
mere flashes of light, white or coloured, still or in movement.
Often they are more elaborate, distinct visions of faces, per-
sons, objects, places. They may be combined with sensations
from the other special senses, as with hearing and smell. In
one case a warning, constant for years, began with thumping
in the chest ascending to the head, where it became a beating
sound. Then two lights appeared, advancing nearer with a
pulsating motion. Suddenly these disappeared and were re-
placed by the figure of an old woman in a red cloak, always
the same, who offered the patient something that had the
smell of Tonquin beans, and then he lost consciousness. Such
warnings may be called psychovisual sensations. The psy-
chical element may be very strong, as in one woman whose fits
were preceded by a sudden distinct vision of London in ruins,
the river Thames emptied to receive the rubbish, and she the
only survivor of the inhabitants.

Had a man of lesser renown and mental calibre
than Mr. Wallace thrown the weight of his testimony
into the scales in favour of spiritualism, there would
have been neither necessity nor excuse for this di-
gression. But both these pleas prevail when we
find the co-formulator of the Darwinian theory

156

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

among mediums and their dupes. The respectful
attention which his words command: the tremendous
claims which he makes on behalf of the phenomena
at seances as proving the existence of soul apart
from body after death, and as revealing the con-
ditions under which it lives, have made incumbent
the foregoing attempt to indicate what other ex-
planation is given of those phenomena, showing
how these fall in with all we know of man's tend-
encies to imperfect observation and self-deception,
and with all that history tells of the persistence of
animistic ideas.

A salutary lesson on the use and misuse of the
imagination is thus taught. That which, under
wholesome restraint, is the initiative and incentive
of inquiry, of enterprise, and of noble ideas; un-
restricted, leads the dreamer and the enthusiast into
ingulfing quicksands of illusions and delusions.
Hence the necessity of curbing a faculty so that in
unison with reason, it works toward definite ends
within the domain, marking man's limits of service.
As Dr. Maudsley reminds us in his sane and sober
book on Natural Causes and Supernatural Seeming,
" not by standing out of Nature in the ecstasy of a
rapt and over-strained idealism of any sort, but by
large and close and faithful converse with Nature
and human nature in all their moods, aspects, and
relations, is the solid basis of fruitful ideas and the
soundest mental development laid. The endeavour
to stimulate and strain any mental function to an

MODERN EVOLUTION, 1 57

activity beyond the reach and need of a physical
correlate in external nature, and to give it an inde-
pendent value, is certainly an endeavour to go direct-
ly contrary to the sober and salutary method by
which solid human development has taken place in
the past, and is taking place in the present."

The story of Darwin's work must now be re-
sumed. Shortly after the Linnsean meeting, he pre-
pared a series of chapters which, always regarded
by him as an " Abstract," ultimately took book form,
and was pubHshed, under the title of the Origin of
Species, on the 24th of November, 1859.

The story of the reception of the work is admir-
ably told by Huxley in the chapter which he con-
tributed to Darwin's Life and Letters, and it may be
commended as useful reading to a generation which,
drinking-in Darwinism from its birth, will not readily
understand how such storm and outcry as rent the
air, both in scientific as well as clerical quarters,
could have been raised. " In fact," says Huxley,
" the contrast between the present condition of public
opinion upon the Darwinian question; between the
estimation in which Darwin's views are now held in
the scientific world; between the acquiescence, or, at
least, quiescence, of the theologian of the self-respect-
ing order at the present day, and the outburst of
antagonism on all sides in 1858-59, when the new
theory respecting the origin of species first became
known to the older generation to which I belong, is

1^8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

SO startling that, except for documentary evidence, I
should be sometimes inclined to think my memories
dreams." The like reflection arises when we con-
sider the indifference with which books of the most
daring and revolutionary character, both in theology
and morals, are treated nowadays, in contrast to the
uproar which greeted such a bnttum fulmen as Essays
and Reviews. As for Colenso's Pentateuch, and
books of its type, orthodoxy has long taken them to
its bosom.

So far as the larger number of naturalists, and of
the intelligent public who followed their lead, were
concerned, there was an absolutely open mind on
the question of the mutation of species. There had
been, as the foregoing sections of this book have
shown, a long time of preparation and speculation.
We certainly find the keynote of Evolution in
Heraclitus, and more than two thousand years after
his time Herbert Spencer, above all men, had re-
moved it from the empirical stage, and placed it on
a base broad as the facts which supported it. But
it needed the leaven of the human and personal
to stir it into life, and touch man in his various
interests; and not all that Mr. Spencer had done in
application of the theory of development to social
questions and institutions could avail much till Dar-
win's theory gave it practical shape. Dissertations
on the passage of the " homogeneous to the hetero-
geneous " ; explanations of the theory of the evo-
lution of complex sidereal systems out of diffused

MODERN EVOLUTION.

159

vapours of seemingly simple texture, interested
people only in a vague and wondering fashion.
But when Darwin illustrated the theory of the modi-
fication of life-forms by familiar examples gathered
from his own experiments and observations, and from
intercourse with breeders of pigeons, horses, and
dogs, this went to men's " business and bosoms,"
and if the vulgar interpreted Darwinism, as some,
who should know better, interpret it even now, as
explaining man's descent from a monkey, or how a
bear became a whale by taking to swimming, the
thoughtful accepted it as a master-key unlocking not
the mystery of origins or of causes of variations,
but the mystery of the ceaselessly-acting agent
which, operating on favourable variations, has
brought about myriads of species from simple forms.
As Huxley reminds us in the passage quoted
above, the attitude of the clergy toward the theory
of Evolution has undergone an astounding change.
Dr. Whewell remarked that every great discovery in
science has had to pass through three stages. First,
people said, " It is absurd " ; then they said, " It is
contrary to the Bible " ; finally, they said, " We
always knew that it was so." Thus it has been with
Evolution. It is calmly discussed; even claimed as
a " defender of the faith," at Church Congresses now-
adays. It was not so in the sixties. Here and there
a single voice was raised in qualified sympathy —
Charles Kingsley showed more than this — but both
in the Old and the New World the " drum ecclesias-

l6o PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

tic " was beaten. Cardinal Manning declared Dar-
winism to be a '' brutal philosophy, to wit, there is
no God and the ape is our Adam." Protestant and
Catholic agreed in condemning it as " an attempt to
dethrone God " ; as '' a huge imposture," as " tend-
ing to produce disbelief of the Bible," and " to do
away with all idea of God," as " turning the Creator
out of doors." Such are fair samples to be culled
from the anthology of invective which was the staple
content of nearly every '' criticism." Occasionally
some parody of reasoning appears when the " argu-
ment " is advanced that there is " a simpler explana-
tion of the presence of these strange forms among
the works of God in the fall of Adam," but even this
pseudo-concession to logic is rare; and one divine
had no hesitation in predicting the fate of Darwin
and his followers in the world to come. " If," said a
Dr. Duffield in the Princeton Review, " the de-
velopment theory of the origin of man shall, in a
little while, take the place — as doubtless it will — with
other exploded scientific speculations, then they who
accept it with its proper logical consequences will,
in the life to come, have their portion with those who
in this life * know not God and obey not the Gospel
of His Son.' " But the most notable attack came
from Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, in
the Quarterly Review of July, i860. " It is," said
Huxley, in his review of Haeckel's Evolution of Man,
" a production which should be bound in good stout
calf, or better, asses' skin, by the curious book-col-

MODERN EVOLUTION. l6l

lector, together with Brougham's attack on the un-
dulatory theory of light when it was first propounded
by Young." The bishop declared " the principle of
natural selection to be absolutely incompatible with
the word of God " and as *' contradicting the re-
vealed relations of creation to its Creator." If by
" revealed relations " and the " word of God " the
Bible is intended, the evolutionist is in agreement
with the bishop. But, at this time of day, it seems
scarcely worth while to shake the dust off articles
which have gone the way of all purely controversial
matter, and justification for reference to them lies
only in the fact that the contest between the biolo-
gists and the bishops is not yet ended.

In contrast to all this, and in evidence of the
compromise by which theology is vainly striving to
justify itself, are these vague sentences from Arch-
deacon Wilson's address at the Church Congress at
Shrewsbury in the autumn of 1896: " It is scarcely
too much to say that the Theistic Evolutionist cannot
be otherwise than a practical Trinitarian, and cannot
find a difficulty in the Incarnation or in the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit." " Christian doctrine, apart from
the statement of historical facts, is the attempt to
create out of Christ's teachirg, a philosophy of life
which shall satisfy these needs (i. e., the needs of
humanity), and it will therefore remain the same in
substance. But the form in which that doctrine will
be presented must change with man's intellectual en-
vironment. The bearing of Evolution on Christian

1 62 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

doctrine is, therefore, in a word, to modify, not the
doctrine, but the form in which it is expressed."

Postponing the story of the famous debate be-
tween Wilberforce and Huxley, the reception ac-
corded to the Origin of Species by Darwin's scien-
tific contemporaries may be noted. Herbert Spen-
cer's position, as will be shown later on, was already
distinctive: he was a Darwinian before Darwin.
Hooker, Huxley, — who said that he was prepared to
go to the stake, if needs be, in support of some parts
of the book, — Bates, and Lubbock were immediate
converts; so were Asa Gray and Lyell, but with
reservations, for Lyell, whose creed was Unitarian,
never wholly accepted the inclusion of man, " body
soul, and spirit," as the outcome of natural selection.
Henslow and Pictet went one mile, but refused to go
twain; Agassiz, Murray, and Harvey would have
none of the new heresy; neither would Adam Sedg-
wick, who wrote a long protest to Darwin, couched
in loving terms, and ending with the hope that '' we
shall meet in heaven." The attitude of Owen, if ap-
parently neutral or tentative in open conversation,
was, as an anonymous critic, deadly hostile. Al-
though it is not included in the list of his writings
given in the Life by his grandson, he is known to
have been the author of the critique on the Origin of
Species in the Edinburgh Review of April, i860.

At the outset of the article- he speaks of Darwin's
" seduction " of " several, perhaps the majority of our
younger naturalists " by the homoeopathic form of

MODERN EVOLUTION. 163

the transmutation of species presented to them under
the phrase of natural selection. ..." Owen has long
stated his belief that some pre-ordained law or
secondary cause is operative in bringing about the
change ... we therefore regard the painstaking
and minute comparison by Cuvier of the osteological
and every other character that could be tested in the
mummified ibis, cat, or crocodile with those of species
living in his time; and the equally philosophical
investigation of the polyps operating at an interval
of thirty thousand years in the building-up of coral
reefs by the profound palaeontologist of Neuchatel
(Agassiz is here referred to), as of far truer value in
reference to the inductive determination of the ques-
tion of the origin of species than the speculations of
Demailler, Bufifon, Lamarck, ' Vestiges,' Baden
Powell, or Darwin " (p. 532).

Entangled in the meshes of this theory of a '' pre-
ordained law," which seems to bear some relation to
Aristotle's " perfecting principle," and is in close
alliance with the teaching of the great Cuvier, at
whose feet Owen had sat, he remained to the end of
his life a type of arrested development. While the
Church cited him as an authority against the Dar-
winian theory, especially in its application to man's
descent, there remained in the memory of his brother
savants his lack of candour in never withdrawing the
statement made by him, and demonstrated by Hux-
ley as untrue, that the '' hippocampus minor " in the
human brain is absent from the brain of the ape.

164 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

As for the reception of the book abroad, the
French savants were somewhat coy, but the Germans,
with Haeckel at their head, were enthusiastic. Dar-
win had, hke all prophets, more honour in other
countries than in his own. Evolution being rechris-
tened Darwinismus. Translation after translation
of the Origin followed apace, and the personal in-
terest that gathered round the central idea led to
the perusal of the book by people who had never
before opened a scientific treatise. Punch seized on
it as subject of caricature; and writers of light verse
found welcome material for " chaff " which the winds
of oblivion have blown away, a stanza here and there
surviving, as in Mr. Courthope's Aristophanic Hues:

Eggs were laid as before, but each time more and more varieties

struggled and bred,
Till one end of the scale dropped its ancestor's tail, and the other

got rid of his head.
From the bill, in brief words, were developed the Birds, unless our

tame pigeons and ducks lie ;
From the tail and hind legs, in the second-laid eggs, the apes, —

and Professor Huxley !

Heeding neither squib, satire, nor sermon, Dar-
win, in the quiet of his Kentish home, went on re-
arranging old materials, collecting new materials,
and verifying both, the outcome of this being his
works on the Fertilization of Orchids and the Varia-
tion of Plants and Animals under Domestication,
published in 1862 and 1867 respectively. Between
these dates Huxley's Man's Place in Nature — logical

MODERN EVOLUTION. 165

supplement to the Origin of Species — appeared. But
of this more anon.

Meanwhile, as already named, Mr. Patrick Mat-
thew had in the Gardener's Chronicle of 7th April,
i860, drawn attention to an appendix to his book on
Naval Timber and Arboriculture published in 1831,
in which he anticipated Darwin and Wallace's theory
as follows:

" The self-regulating adaptive disposition of
organised life may, in part, be traced to the extreme
fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has in all
the varieties cf her offspring a prolific power much
beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is neces-
sary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay.
As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied,
it is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-
circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle
forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situ-
ations to which they have superior adaptation and
greater power of occupancy than any other kind;
the weaker and less circumstance-suited being pre-
maturely destroyed. This principle is in constant
action; it regulates the colour, the figure, the ca-
pacities, and instincts; those individuals in each
species whose colour and covering are best suited
to concealment or protection from enemies, or de-
fence from inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate,
whose figure is best accommodated to health,
strength, defence, and support; whose capacities and
instincts can best regulate the physical energies to

1 66 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

self-advantage according to circumstances — in such
immense waste of primary and youthful life those
only come to maturity from the strict ordeal by
which Nature tests their adaptation to her standard
of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by
reproduction " (pp. 384, 385).

While speaking of difficulty in understanding
some passages in Mr. Matthew's appendix, Darwin
says that " the full force of the principle of natural
selection " is there, and, in referring to it in a letter
to Lyell, he adds that " one may be excused in not
having discovered the fact in a work on Naval
Timber!"

Five years after this, another pre-Darwinian was
unearthed, and, like Patrick Matthew, in unsuspected
company. Dr. W. C. Wells read a paper before the
Royal Society in 181 3 on a White Female Part of
whose Skin resembles that of a Negro, but this was
not published till 1818, when it formed part of a
volume including the author's famous Two Essays
upon Dew and Single Vision. In his Historical
Sketch Darwin says that Wells " distinctly recog-
nis'es the principle of natural selection, and this is
the first recognition which has been indicated; but
he applies it only to the races of man, and to certain
characters alone. ... Of the accidental varieties of
man, which would occur among the first few and
scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa,
some one would be better fitted than the others to
bear the diseases of the country. This race would

MODERN EVOLUTION. 167

consequently multiply, while the others would de-
crease; not only from their inability to sustain the
attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of con-
tending with their more vigorous neighbours."

When the simplicity of the long-hidden solution
is brought home, we can understand Huxley's reflec-
tion on mastering the central idea of the Origin:
" How extremely stupid not to have thought of
that! " Twelve years elapsed before Darwin followed
up his world-shaking book with the Descent of Man.
But the ground had been prepared for its reception
in the decade between i860 and 1870. Quoting
Grant Allen's able summary of the advance of the
theory of Evolution in his Charles Darwin: ''One
by one the few scientific men who still held out
were overborne by the weight of evidence. Geology
kept supplying fresh instances of transitional forms;
the progress of research in unexplored countries kept
adding to our knowledge of existing intermediate
species and varieties. During those ten years, Her-
bert Spencer published his First Principles, his
Biology, and the remodelled form of his Psychology;
Huxley brought out Man's Place in Nature, the
Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, and the Intro-
duction to the Classification of Animals; Wallace
produced his Malay Archipelago and his Contribu-
tions to the Theory of Natural Selection (Bates, we
may here add to Mr. Allen's list, published his paper
on Mimicry in 1861, and his NaturaHst on the
Amazons in 1863); and Galton wrote his admirable

1 68 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

work on Hereditary Genius, of which his own family
is so remarkable an instance. Tyndall and Lewes
had long since signified their warm adhesion. At
Oxford, Rolleston was bringing up a fresh genera-
tion of young biologists in the new faith; at Cam-
bridge, Darwin's old university, a whole school of
brilliant and accurate physiologists was beginning to
make itself both felt and heard. In the domain of
anthropology, Tylor was welcoming the assistance of
the new ideas, while Lubbock was engaged on his
kindred investigations into the Origin of CiviHzation
and the Primitive Condition of Man. All these
diverse lines of thought both showed the widespread
influence of Darwin's first great work, and led up
to the preparation of his second, in which he dealt
with the history and development of the human race.
And what was thus true of England was equally
true of the civilized world, regarded as a whole:
everywhere the great evolutionary movement was
well in progress, everywhere the impulse sent forth
from the quiet Kentish home was permeating and
quickening the entire pulse of intelligent humanity."
The Origin of Species, as we have seen, was in-
tended as a rough draft or preliminary outline of
the theory of natural selection. The materials which
Darwin had collected in support of that theory being
enormous, the several books which followed between
1859 and 1 88 1, the year before his death, were ex-
pansions of hints and parts of the pioneer book.
The last to appear was that treating of The Forma-

MODERN EVOLUTION. 1 69

tion of Vegetable Mould through the Action of
Worms. It embodied the results of experiments
which had been carried on for more than forty years,
since, as far back as 1837, Darwin read a paper on
the subject before the Geological Society. Reference
to it recalls a story, characteristic of Darwin's innate
modesty, told to the writer by the present John
Murray. Darwin called on the elder Murray (pre-
sumably some time in 1880), and after fumbling
in his coat-tail pocket, drew out a packet, which
he handed to Murray with the timidity of an un-
fledged author submitting his first manuscript. " I
have brought you," he said, " a little thing of mine
on the action of worms on soil," and then paused as
if in doubt whether Murray would care to run the
risk of bringing out the book! One story leads to
another, and our second relates to the burial of
Darwin in Westminster Abbey. Among the signa-
tures of members of Parliament, requesting Dean
Bradley's consent to Darwin's interment there, was
that of Mr. Richard B. Martin, partner in the well-
known bank of that name, trading under the sign of
the " Grasshopper." In his history of this old institu-
tion Mr. John B. Martin prints the following letter,
which was received on the 27th of April, 1882, the
day after Darwin's funeral: —

Sirs — We have this day drawn a check for the

sum of £280, which closes our account with your

firm. Our reasons for thus closing an account
12

170

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

Opened so very many years "ago are of so exceptional
a kind that we are quite prepared to find that they
are deemed wholly inadequate to the result. . . .
They are entirely the presence of Mr. R. B. Martin
at Westminster Abbey, not merely as giving sanction
to the same as an individual, but appearing as one
of the deputation from a Society which has especially
become the indorser and sustainer of Mr. Darwin's
theories. & Co.

The accordance of a resting-place to Darwin's
remains among England's illustrious dead in that
Valhalla, was an irenicon from Theology to one
whose theories, pushed to their logical issues, have
done more than any other to undermine the super-
natural assumptions on which it is built. Not that
Darwin was a man of aggressive type. If he speaks
on the high matters round which, like planet tethered
to sun, the spirit of man revolves by irresistible at-
traction, it is with hesitating voice and with no deep
emotion. A man of placid temper, in whom the
observing faculties were stronger than the reflective,
he was content to collect and co-ordinate facts,
leaving to others the work of pointing out their
significance, and adjusting them, as best they could,
to this or that theory. It would be unjust to say of
him what John Morley says of Voltaire, that " he
had no ear for the finer vibrations of the spiritual
voice," but we know from his own confessions, what
limitations hemmed in his emotional nature. The

MODERN EVOLUTION.

171

Life and Letters tells us that he was glad, after the
more serious work and correspondence of the day
were over, to listen to novels, for which he had a
great love so long as they ended happily, and con-
tained " some person whom one can thoroughly love,
if a pretty woman, so much the better." But
strangely enough, he lost all pleasure in music, art,
and poetry after thirty. When at school he enjoyed
Thomson, Byron, and Scott; Shelley gave him in-
tense delight, and he was fond of Shakespeare,
especially the historical plays; but in his old age
he found him " so intolerably dull that it nauseated
me."

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic
tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and
travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may
contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects, interest me as
much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a
kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collec-
tions of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of
that part of the brain alone on which the higher tastes depend
I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised
or better constituted than mine would not, I suppose, have
thus suffered ; and, if I had to live my life again, I would have
made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at
least once every week, for perhaps the parts of my brain now
atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The
loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be
injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral char-
acter, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

It is often said that a man's religion concerns
himself only. So far as the value of the majority

172

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

of people's opinions on such high matters goes, this
is true; but it is a shallow saying when applied to
men whose words carry weight, or whose discoveries
cause us to ask what is their bearing on the larger
questions of human relations and destinies to which
past ages have given answers that no longer satisfy
us, or that are not compatible with the facts dis-
covered. Whatever silence Darwin maintained in
his books as to his religious opinions, intelHgent
readers would see that unaggressive as was the mode
of presentments of his theory, it undermined current
beHefs in special providence, with its special creations
and contrivances, and therefore in the intermittent
interference of a deity; thus excluding that super-
natural action of which miracles are the decaying
stock evidence.

Nor could they fail to ask whether the theory of
natural selection by " descent with modification " was
to apply to the human species. And when Darwin,
already anticipated in this application by his more
daring disciples. Professors Huxley and Haeckel,
published his Descent of Man, with its outspoken
chapter on the origin of conscience and the develop-
ment of belief in spiritual beings, a belief subject to
periodical revision as knowledge increased, it was
obvious that the bottom was knocked out of all
traditional dogmas of man's fall and redemption, of
human sin and divine forgiveness. Therefore, what
Darwin himself believed was a matter of moment.
His answers to inquiries which were made public

MODERN EVOLUTION.

173

during his lifetime told us that while the varying
circumstances and modes of life caused his judg-
ment to often fluctuate, and that while he had never
been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence
of a God, " I think," he says, " that generally (and
more and more as I grow older) but not always, an
agnostic would be the most correct description of
my state of mind." The chapter on Religion,
although a part of the autobiography, is printed
separately in the Life and Letters. As the following
quotation shows, it is interesting as detailing a few
of the steps by which Darwin reached, that suspen-
sive stage.

Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I
remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers
(though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an un-
answerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it
was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I
had gradually come by this time — i.e., 1836 to 1839 — to see
that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the
sacred books of the Hindoos. The question, then, continually
rose before my mind, and would not be banished — is it credi-
ble that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos
he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu,
Siva, etc., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament }
This appeared to me utterly incredible.

By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be
requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by
which Christianity is supported — and that the more we know
of the fixed laws of Nature the more incredible do miracles be-
come— that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous
to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, that the Gospels
can not be proved to have been written simultaneously with

174

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

the events, that they differ in many important details, far too
important, as it seems to me, to be admitted as the usual in-
accuracies of eye-witnesses : by such reflections as these, which
I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they in-
fluenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a
divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread
over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight
with me.

But I was very unwilling to give up my belief ; I feel sure
of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-
dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and
manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which
confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in
the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free
scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would
suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very
slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow
that I felt no distress.

Although I did not think much about the existence of a
personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will
here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven.
The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley,
which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the
law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no
longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve
shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the
hinge of a door by a man. There seems to be no more design
in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural
selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I
have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the
Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argu-
ment there given has never, as far as I can see, been an-
swered.

Without doubt, the influence of the conclusions
deducible from the theory of Evolution are fatal to
belief in the supernatural. When we say the super-

MODERN EVOLUTION,

175

natural, we mean that great body of assumptions out
of which are constructed all theologies, the essential
element in these being the intimate relation between
spiritual beings, of whom certain qualities are predi-
cated, and man. These beings have no longer any
place in the effective belief of intelligent and unpre-
judiced men, because they are found to have no
correspondence with the ascertained operations of
Nature.

2. Herbert Spencer.

Contact with many " sorts and conditions of
men " brings home the need of ceaselessly dinning
into their ears the fact that Darwin's theory deals only
with the evolution of plants and animals from a common
ancestry. It is not concerned with the origin of life
itself, nor with those conditions preceding life which
are covered by the general term, Inorganic Evolution.
Therefore, it forms but a very small part of the gen-
eral theory of the origin of the earth and other bodies,
" as the sand by the seashore innumerable," that fill
the infinite spaces.

We have seen that speculation about the universe
had its rise in Ionia. After centuries of discourage-
ment, prohibition, and, sometimes, actual persecu-
tion, it was revived, to advance, without further seri-
ous arrest, some three hundred years ago. A survey
of the history of philosophies of the origin of the
cosmos from the time of the renascence of inquiry,
shows that the great Immanuel Kant has not had his

1^6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

due. As remarked already, he appears to have been
the first to put into shape what is known as the
nebular theory. In his General Natural History and
Theory of the Celestial Bodies; or an Attempt to
Account for the Constitution and the Mechanical
Origin of the Universe upon Newtonian Principles,
published in 1775, he " pictures to himself the uni-
verse as once an infinite expansion of formless and
diffused matter. At one point of this he supposes
a single centre of attraction set up, and shows how
this must result in the development of a prodigious
central body, surrounded by systems of solar and
planetary worlds in all stages of development. In
vivid language he depicts the great world-maelstrom,
widening the margins of its prodigious eddy in the
slow progress of milHons of ages, gradually reclaim-
ing more and more of the molecular waste, and
converting chaos into cosmos. But what is gained
at the margin is lost in the centre; the attractions
of the central systems bring their constituents to-
gether, which then, by the heat evolved, are con-
verted once more into molecular chaos. Thus the
worlds that are lie between the ruins of the worlds
that have been and the chaotic materials of the
worlds that shall be; and in spite of all waste and
destruction. Cosmos is extending his borders at the
expense of Chaos."

Kant's speculations were confirmed by the cele-
brated mathematician, Laplace. He showed that the
" rings " rotate in the same direction as the central

MODERN EVOLUTION.

177

body from which they were cast off; sun, planets,
and moons (those of Uranus excepted) moving in a
common direction, and almost in the same plane.
The probability that these harmonious movements
are the effects of like causes he calculated as 200,000
billions to one.

The observations of the famous astronomer. Sir
William Herschel, which resulted in the discovery of
binary or double stars, of star-clusters, and cloud-like
nebulas (as that term implies) were further confirma-
tions of Kant's theory. And such modifications in
this as have been made by subsequent advance in
knowledge, notably by the doctrine of the Conserva-
tion of Energy (the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace
being based on gravitation alone), affect not the
general theory of the origin of the heavenly bodies
from seemingly formless, unstable, and highly-dif-
fused matter. The assumption of primitive unstable-
ness and unlikeness squares with the unequal
distribution of matter; with the movements of its
masses in different directions, and at different rates;
and with the ceaseless redistribution of matter and
motion. For all changes of states are due to the
rearrangement of the atoms of which matter is made
up, resulting in the evolution of the seeming like into
the actual unlike; of the simple into the more and
more complex, till — speaking of the only planet of
whose life-history we can have knowledge — with the
cooling of the earth to a temperature permitting of
the evolution of living matter, the highest complexity

1^8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

is reached in the infinitely diverse forms of plants
and animals. Therefore, as our knowledge of matter
is limited to the changes of which we assume it to
be the vehicle, it would seem that science reduces
the Universe to the intelligible concept of Motion.

Since the great discovery by KirchofT, in 1859,
of the meaning of the dark lines that cross the
refracted sun-rays, the spectroscope has come as
powerful evidence in support of the nebular theory,
while the photographic plate is a scarcely less im-
portant witness. The one has demonstrated that
many nebulae, once thought to be star-clusters, are
masses of glowing hydrogen and nitrogen gases;
that, to quote the striking communication made by
the highest authority on the subject. Dr. Huggins,
in his Presidential Address to the British Associa-
tion, 1891, " in the part of the heavens within our
ken, the stars still in the early and middle stages of
evolution exceed greatly in number those which
appear to be in an advanced condition of condensa-
tion." The other, recording infallible vibrations on
a sensitive plate, and securing accurate registration
of the impressions, reveals, as in Dr. Roberts's grand
photograph of the nebula in Andromeda, a central
mass round which are distinct rings of luminous
matter, these being separated from the main body
by dark rifts or spaces. To quote Dr. Huggins once
more, " We seem to have presented to us some stage
of cosmical Evolution on a gigantic scale."

The great fact that lies at the back of all these

MODERN EVOLUTION. 1 79

confirmations of the nebular theory is the funda-
mental identity of the stuff of which the universe is
made; a fact which entered into the prevision of the
Ionian cosmologists. Dr. Huggins says that '' if the
whole earth were heated to the temperature of the
sun, its spectrum would resemble very closely the
solar spectrum."

In referring to this, there may be carrying* of
" owls to Athens," but that re-statements may some-
times be needful has illustration in Lord Salisbury's
Presidential Address to the British Association, 1894,
wherein the assumed absence of oxygen and nitrogen
in the sun's spectrum is adduced as an argument
against the theory of the common origin of the
bodies of the solar system. Speaking of the pre-
dominant proportion of oxygen in the solid and
liquid substances of the earth, and of the pre-
dominance of nitrogen in our atmosphere, his lord-
ship asked, " if the earth be a detached bit whisked
off the mass of the sun, as cosmogonists love to tell
us, how comes it that, in leaving the sun, we cleaned
him out so completely of his nitrogen and oxygen
that not a trace of these gases remains behind to
be discovered even by the searching vision of the
spectroscope?" If Lord Salisbury had consulted
Dr. Huggins, or some foreign astronomer of equal
rank, as Duner or Scheiner, he would not have put
a question exposing his ignorance, and unmasking
his prejudice. These authorities would have told
him that when a mixture of the incandescent vapours

l8o PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

of the metals and metalloids (or non-metallic ele-
mentary substances, to which class both oxygen and
nitrogen belong), or their compounds, is examined
with the spectroscope, the spectra of the metalloids
always yield before that of the metals. Hence the
absence of the lines of oxygen and other metalloids,
carbon and siHcon excepted, among the vast crowd
of lines in the solar spectrum. Then, too, in extreme
states of rarefaction of the sun's absorbing layer,
the absorption of the oxygen is too small to be sen-
sible to us.

" While the genesis of the Solar System, and of
countless other systems like it, is thus rendered com-
prehensible, the ultimate mystery continues as great
as ever. The problem of existence is not solved:
it is simply removed further back. The Nebular
Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused
matter; and diffused matter as much needs account-
ing for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom
is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet.
Nay, indeed, so far from making the universe a less
mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery.
Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than
creation by evolution. A man can put together a
machine; but he cannot make a machine develop
itself. The ingenious artisan, able as some have
been so far to imitate vitality as to produce a me-
chanical pianoforte player, may in some sort con-
ceive how, by greater skill, a complete man might
be artificially produced; but he is unable to conceive

MODERN EVOLUTION. l8i

how such a complex organism gradually arises out
of a minute structureless germ. That our harmo-
nious universe once existed potentially as formless
diffuse matter, and has slowly grown into its present
organized state, is a far more astonishing fact than
would have been its formation after the artificial
method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it
legitimate to argue from phenomena to noumena,
may rightly contend that the Nebular Hypothesis
implies a First Cause as much transcending ' the
mechanical God of Paley ' as does the fetish of the
savage."

This quotation is from an essay on the Nebular
Hypothesis, which appeared in the Westminster
Review of July, 1858, and which must, therefore,
have been written before the eventful date of the
reading of Darwin and Wallace's memorable paper
before the Linnsean Society. The author of that
essay is Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the foregoing
extract from it may fitly preface a brief account of
his life-work in co-ordinating the manifold branches
of knowledge into a synthetic whole. In erecting a
complete theory of Evolution on a purely scientific
basis " his profound and vigorous writings," to quote
Huxley, '' embody the spirit of Descartes in the
knowledge of our own day." Laying the foundation
of his massive structure in early manhood, Mr.
Spencer has had the rare satisfaction of placing the
topmost stone on the building which his brain de-
vised and his hand upreared. While the sheets of

1 82 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

this little book are being passed for press, there ar-
rives the third volume of the Principles of Sociology,
which completes Mr. Spencer's Synthetic Philoso-
phy. In the preface to this, the venerable author
says:

" On looking back over the six-and-thirty years
which I have passed since the Synthetic Philos-
ophy was commenced, I am surprised at my
audacity in undertaking it, and still more surprised
by its completion. In i860 my small resources had
been nearly all frittered away in writing and publish-
ing books which did not repay their expenses; and
I was suffering under a chronic disorder, caused by
overtax of brain in 1855, which, wholly disabling
me for eighteen months, thereafter limited my work
to three hours a day, and usually to less. How in-
sane my project must have seemed to onlookers,
may be judged from the fact that before the first
chapter of the first volume was finished, one of my
nervous breakdowns obliged me to desist.

'' But imprudent courses do not always fail.
Sometimes a forlorn hope is justified by the event.
Though, along with other deterrents, many relapses,
now lasting for weeks, now for months, and once for
years, often made me despair of reaching the end,
yet at length the end is reached. Doubtless in
earlier years some exultation would have resulted;
but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and now my
chief pleasure is in my emancipation. Still there is
satisfaction in the consciousness that losses, dis-

MODERN EVOLUTION.

183

couragements, and shattered health have not pre-
vented me from fulfilling the purpose of my life."

These words recall a parallel invited by Gibbon's
record of his feelings on the completion of his im-
mortal work, when walking under the acacias of his
garden at Lausanne, he pondered on the " recovery
of his freedom, and perhaps the establishment of his
fame," but with a " sober melancholy " at the thought
that " he had taken an everlasting leave of an old
and agreeable companion."

Herbert Spencer, spiritual descendant — longo
intervallo — of Heraclitus and Lucretius, was born at
Derby on the 27th of April, 1820. His father was a
schoolmaster; a man of scientific tastes, and, it is
interesting to note, secretary of the Derby Philo-
sophical Association founded by Erasmus Darwin.
In Mr. Spencer's book on Education there are hints
of his inheritance of the father's bent as an observer
and lover of Nature in the remark that, " whoever
has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows
not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-
rows can assume." He was articled in his seven-
teenth year to a railway engineer, and followed that
profession until he was twenty-five. During this
period he wrote various papers for the Civil En-
gineers' and Architects' Journal, and, what is of
importance to note, a series of letters to the Non-
conformist in 1842 on The Proper Sphere of
Government (republished as a pamphlet in 1844),
in which " the only point of community with the

1 84 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

general doctrine of Evolution is a belief in the modi-
fiability of human nature through adaptation to con-
ditions, and a consequent belief in human pro-
gression." After giving up engineering, Mr. Spencer
joined the staff of the Economist, and while thus
employed, published, in 1850, his first important
book. Social Statics, or the Conditions essential to
Human Happiness specified, and the first of them
developed. In a footnote to the later editions of this
work Mr. Spencer points out a brace of para-
graphs in the chapter on General Considerations in
which " may be seen the first step toward the gen-
eral doctrine of Evolution. After referring to the
analogy between the subdivision of labour, which
goes on in human society as it advances; and the
gradual diminution in the number of like parts and
the multiplication of unlike parts which are observ-
able in the higher animals ; Mr. Spencer says :

" Now, just the same coalescence of like parts and
separation of unlike ones — ^just the same increasing
subdivision of function — takes place in the develop-
ment of society. The earHest social organisms con-
sist almost wholly of repetitions of one element.
Every man is a warrior, hunter, fisherman, builder,
agriculturist, toolmaker. Each portion of the com-
munity performs the same duties with every other
portion; much as each slice of the polyp's body is
alike stomach, muscle, skin, and lungs. Even the
chiefs, in whom a tendency towards separateness of
function first appears, still retain their similarity to

MODERN EVOLUTION.

185

the rest in economic respects. The next stage is
distinguished by a segregation of these social units
into a few distinct classes — warriors, priests, and
slaves. A further advance is seen in the sundering
of the labourers into different castes, having special
occupations, as among the Hindoos. And, without
further illustration, the reader will at once perceive,
that from these inferior types of society up to our
own complicated and more perfect one, the progress
has ever been of the same nature. While he will
also perceive that this coalescence of like parts, as
seen in the concentration of particular manufactures
in particular districts, and this separation of agents
having separate functions, as seen in the more and
more minute division of labour, are still going on.

" Thus do we find, not only that the analogy
between a society and a living creature is borne out
to a degree quite unsuspected by those who com-
monly draw it, but also that the same definition of
life applies to both. This union of many men into
one community — this increasing mutual dependence
of units which were originally independent — this
formation of a whole consisting of unlike parts —
this growth of an organism, of which one portion
cannot be injured without the rest feeling it — may
all be generalized under the law of individuation.
The development of society, as well as the develop-
ment of man and the development of life generally^
may be described as a tendency to individuate — to
become a thing. And rightly interpreted, the mani-
13

1 36 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

fold forms of progress going on around us are uni-
formly significant of this tendency."

Homo sum: humani nihil a me alieniim puto: " I
am a man and nothing human is foreign to me."
This oft-quoted saying of the old farmer in the Self-
Tormentor of Terence might be affixed as motto
to Herbert Spencer's writings from the tractate on
the Proper Sphere of Government to the concluding
volume of the Principles of Sociology. For thought
of human interests everywhere pervades them ; social
and ethical questions are kept in the van throughout.
Philosophy is brbught from her high seat to mix
in the sweet amenities of home, in the discipline of
camp, in the rivalry of market; and linked to con-
duct. Conduct is defined as " acts adjusted to ends,"
the perfecting of the adjustment being the highest
aim, so that " the greatest totality of Hfe in self, in
offspring, and in fellow-men " is secured, the limit
of evolution of conduct not being reached, " until,
beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to
others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the
welfare of others." Emerson puts this ideal into
crisp form when he speaks of the time in which a
man shall care more that he wrongs not his neigh-
bour than that his neighbour wrongs him; then will
his " market-cart become a chariot of the sun."

That humanity is the pivot round which Mr.
Spencer's philosophic system revolves is seen in the
earliest Essays, and notably in his making mental
evolution the subject of the first instalment of his

MODERN EVOLUTION, 1 87

Synthetic Philosophy. For, in the Principles of
Psychology, published in 1855, he limits feeling or
consciousness to animals possessing a nervous sys-
tem, and traces its beginnings in the " blurred,
undetermined feeling answering to a single pulsation
or shock " (as for example, to go no lower down
the life-scale, in the medusa or jelly-fish), to its
highest form as self-consciousness, or knowing that
we know, in man. This dominant element in Mr.
Spencer's philosophy secures it a life and permanence
which, had it been restricted to explaining the
mechanics of the inorganic universe, it could never
have possessed. It has been observed how the Dar-
winian theory aroused attention in all quarters
because it touched human interests on every side.
And, although less obvious to the multitude, the
Synthetic Philosophy, deaHng with all cosmic pro-
cesses as purely mechanical problems, interprets
" the phenomena of life (excluding the question of
its origin), mind, and society, in terms of matter
and motion." Anticipating the levelling of epithets
against such apparent materializing of mental phe-
nomena involved in that method, Spencer remarks
on the dismay with which men, who have not risen
above the vulgar conception which unites with mat-
ter the contemptuous epithets " gross " and " brute,"
regard the proposal to reduce the phenomena of Life,
of Mind, and of Society, to a level which they think
so degraded. " Whoever remembers that the forms
of existence which the uncultivated speak of with so

1 88 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

much scorn, are shown by the man of science to be
the more marvellous in their attributes the more they
are investigated, and are also proved to be in their
ultimate natures absolutely incomprehensible — as
absolutely incomprehensible as sensation, or the
conscious something which perceives it — whoever
clearly recognises this truth, will see that the course
proposed does not imply a degradation of the so-
called higher, but an elevation of the so-called lower.
Perceiving, as he will, that the Materialist and
Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words, — in
which the disputants are equally absurd, each think-
ing that he understands that which it is impossible
for any man to understand, — he will perceive how
utterly groundless is the fear referred to. Being
fully convinced that no matter what nomenclature is
used, the ultimate mystery must remain the same,
he will be as ready to formulate all phenomena in
terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, as in any other
terms; and will rather indeed anticipate, that only
in a doctrine which recognises the Unknown Cause
as co-extensive with all orders of phenomena, can
there be a consistent Religion, or a consistent
Philosophy."

This is clear enough; yet such is the crass density
of some objectors that eighteen years after the above
was written, Mr. Spencer, in answering criticisms
on First Principles, had to rebut the charge that he
believed matter to consist of " space-occupying
units, having shape and measurement."

MODERN EVOLUTION. 189

The Principles of Psychology was both preceded
and followed by a series of essays in which the
process of change from the " homogeneous to the
heterogeneous," i. e., from the seeming like to the
actual unlike, was expounded. Mr. Spencer tells
us that in 1852 he first became acquainted with
Von Baer's Law of Development, or the changes
undergone in each living thing, from the general to
the special, during its advance from the embryonic
to the fully-formed state. That law confirmed the
prevision indicated in the passages quoted above
from Social Statics, and impressed him as one of
the three doctrines which are indispensable elements
of the general theory of Evolution. The other two
are the Correlation of the Physical Forces, or the
transformation of different modes of motion into
other modes of motion, as of heat or light into
electricity, and so forth, in Proteus-like fashion; and
the Conservation of Energy, or the indestructibility
of matter and motion, whatever changes or trans-
formations these may undergo.

In permitting the quotation of the useful abstract
of the Synthetic Philosophy which, originally drawn
up for the late Professor Youmans, was imbodied
in a letter to the Athenaeum of 22d of July, 1882, Mr.
Spencer was good enough to volunteer the following
details to the writer: —

" You are probably aware that the conception set
forth in that abstract was reached by slow steps dur-
ing many years. These steps occurred as follows : — ■

190

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

1850. Social Statics: especially chapter General
Considerations. (Higher human Evo-
lution.)

1852. March. Development Hypothesis, in the
Leader. (Evolution of species, vid.
ante, p. iii.)

1852. April. Theory of Population, etc., in West-
minster Review. (Higher human Evo-
lution.)

1854. July. The Genesis of Science in British
Quarterly Review. (Intellectual Evo-
lution.)

1855.. July- Principles of Psychology. (Mental
Evolution in general.)

1857. April. Progress: its Law and Cause: West-
minster Review. (Evolution at large.)

1857. April. Ultimate Laws of Physiology.
National Review. (Another factor of
Evolution at large.)

^' From these last two Essays came the inception
of the Synthetic Philosophy. The first programme
of it was drawn up in January, 1858." . . .

When seeing Mr. Spencer on the subject of this
letter, he took the further trouble to point out certain
passages in the essays originally comprised in the
one volume edition of 1858 which contain germinal
ideas of his synthesis. That they are his selection
will add to the interest and value of their quotation,
revealing, as perchance they may, a fragment of the

MODERN EVOLUTION. jqi

autobiography which it is an open secret Mr. Spencer
has written.

" That Law, Religion, and Manners are thus re-
lated— that their respective kinds of operation come
under one generalisation — that they have in certain
contrasted characteristics of men a common support
and a common danger — will, however, be most
clearly seen on discovering that they have a com-
mon origin. Little as from present appearances we
should suppose it, we shall yet find that at first,
the control of religion, the control of laws, and the
control of manners, were all one control. However
incredible it may now seem, we believe it to be
demonstrable that the rules of etiquette, the pro-
visions of the statute-book, and the commands of the
decalogue, have grown from the same root. If we
go far back enough into the ages of primeval
Fetishism, it becomes manifest that originally Deity,
Chief, and Master of the Cermonies were identical "
(Essays, vol. i, 1883 edition; Manners and Fashion,

p- 65). ^

" Scientific advance is as much from the special
to the general as from the general to the special.
Quite in harmony with this we find to be the admis-
sions that the sciences are as branches of one trunk,
and that they were at first cultivated simultaneously;
and this becomes the more marked on finding, as we
have done, not only that the sciences have a common
root, but that science in general has a common root
with language, classification, reasoning, art; that

192

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

throughout civilisation these have advanced together,
acting and reacting on each other just as the sepa-
rate sciences have done; and that thus the develop-
ment of intelhgence in all its divisions and subdi-
visions has conformed to this same law to which
we have shown the sciences conform " (lb. The
Genesis of Science, pp. 191, 192).

(In correspondence with this, recognising that
the same method has to be adopted in all inquiry,
whether we deal with the body or the mind, the fol-
lowing may be quoted from Hume's Treatise on
Human Nature.

" 'Tis evident that all the sciences have a relation,
greater or less, to human nature; and that, however
wide any of them may seem to run from it, they
still return back by one passage or another. Even
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Re-
ligion are in some measure dependent on the sci-
ence of Man, since they lie under the cognisance
of men, and are judged of by their powers and
qualities.)

'' The analogy between individual organisms and
the social organisms is one that has in all ages forced
itself on the attention of the observant. . . . While it
is becoming clear that there are no such special
parallelisms between the constituent parts of a man
and those of a nation, as have been thought to exist,
it is also becoming clear that the general principles
of development and structure displayed in all organ-
ised bodies are displayed in societies also. The fun-

MODERN EVOLUTION.

193

damental characteristic both of societies and of hving
creatures is, that they consist of mutually dependent
parts; and it would seem that this involves a com-
munity of various other characteristics. . . . Mean-
while, if any such correspondence exists, it is clear
that Biology and Sociology will more or less inter-
pret each other.

" One of the positions we have endeavoured to
establish is, that in animals the process of develop-
ment is carried on, not by differentiations only, but
by subordinate integrations. Now in the social or-
ganism we may see the same duality of process; and
further, it is to be observed that the integrations are
of the same three kinds. Thus we have integrations
that .arise from the simple growth of adjacent parts
that perform like functions; as, for instance, the co-
alescence of Manchester with its calico-weaving
suburbs. We have other integrations that arise
when, out of several places producing a particular
commodity, one monopolises more and more of the
business, and leaves the rest to dwindle; as witness
the growth of the Yorkshire cloth districts at the
expense of those in the west of England. . . . And
we have yet those other integrations that result from
the actual approximation of the similarly-occupied
parts, whence results such facts as the concentration
of publishers in Paternoster Row, of lawyers in the
Temple and neighbourhood, of corn merchants about
Mark Lane, of civil engineers in Great George
Street, of bankers in the centre of the city " (Essays,

194

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

vol. iii, 1878 edition; Transcendental Physiology,
pp. 414-416).

But, divested of technicalities, and summarized
in words to be *' understanded of the people," the
following quotation from the Essay on Progress: Its
Law and Cause, gives the gist of the Synthetic Phi-
losophy :

" We believe we have shown beyond question
that that which the German physiologists (Von
Baer, Wolfif, and others) have found to be the law
of organic development (as of a seed into a tree,
and of an ^^^ into an animal), is the law of all de-
velopment. The advance from the simple to the
complex, through a process of successive differentia-
tions (i. e., the appearance of differences in the parts
of a seemingly like substance), is seen alike in the
earliest changes of the Universe to which we can
reason our way back; and in the earlier changes
which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the
geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth, and of
every single organism on its surface; it is seen in
the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated
in the civilised individual, or in the aggregation of
races; it is seen in the evolution of Society in re-
spect alike of its political, its religious, and its eco-
nomical organisation; and it is seen in the evolu-
tion of all those endless concrete and abstract prod-
ucts of human activity which constitute the environ-
ment of our daily life. From the remotest past
which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of yes-

MODERN EVOLUTION, 1Q5

terday, that in which Progress essentially consists,
is the transformation of the homogeneous into the
heterogeneous " (Essays, vol. i, 1883, p. 30).

To this may fitly follow the " succinct statement
of the cardinal principles developed in the successive
works," which Mr. Spencer, as named above, pre-
pared for Professor Youmans.

1. Throughout the universe in general and in
detail there is an unceasing redistribution of matter
and motion.

2. This redistribution constitutes evolution when
there is a predominant integration of matter and
dissipation of motion, and constitutes dissolution
when there is a predominant absorption of motion
and disintegration of matter.

3. Evolution is simple when the process of in-
tegration, or the formation of a coherent aggregate,
proceeds uncomplicated by other processes.

4. Evolution is compound, when along with this
primary change from an incoherent to a coherent
state, there go on secondary changes due to differ-
ences in the circumstances of the different parts of
the aggregate.

5. These secondary changes constitute a trans-
formation of the homogeneous into the hetero-
geneous— a transformation which, like the first, is
exhibited in the universe as a whole and in all (or
nearly all) its details; in the aggregate of stars and
nebulae; in the planetary system; in the earth as an
inorganic mass; in each organism, vegetal or ani-

ig6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

mal (Von Baer's law otherwise expressed); in the
aggregate of organisms throughout geologic time;
in the mind; in society; in all products of social
activity.

6. The process of integration, acting locally as
well as generally, combines with the process of dif-
ferentiation to render this change not simply from
homogeneity to heterogeneity, but from an indefinite
homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity; and this
trait of increasing definiteness, which accompanies
the trait of increasing heterogeneity, is, like it, ex-
hibited in the totality of things and in all its divisions
and subdivisions down to the minutest.

7. Along with this redistribution of the matter
composing any evolving aggregate there goes on a
redistribution of the retained motion of its com-
ponents in relation to one another; this also becomes,
step by step, more definitely heterogeneous.

8. In the absence of a homogeneity that is in-
finite and absolute, that redistribution, of which evo-
lution is one phase, is inevitable. The causes which
necessitate it are these —

9. The instability of the homogeneous, which is
consequent upon the different exposures of the dif-
ferent parts of any limited aggregate to incident
forces.

The transformations hence resulting are —

10. The multiplication of effects. Every mass
and part of a mass on which a force falls subdivides
and differentiates that force, which thereupon pro-

MODERN EVOLUTION. 197

ceeds to work a variety of changes; and each of
these becomes the parent of similarly-multiplying
changes; the multiplication of them becoming great-
er in proportion as the aggregate becomes more
heterogeneous. And these two causes of increasing
differentiations are furthered by

11. Segregation, which is a process tending ever
to separate unlike units and to bring together like
units — so serving continually to sharpen, or make
definite, differentiations otherwise caused.

12. Equilibration is the final result of these trans-
formations which an evolving aggregate undergoes.
The changes go on until there is reached an equi-
librium between the forces which all parts of the
aggregate are exposed to and the forces these parts
oppose to them.

Equilibration may pass through a transition stage
of balanced motions (as in a planetary system) or of
balanced functions (as in a living body) on the way
to ultimate equilibrium; but the state of rest in in-
organic bodies, or death in organic bodies, is the
necessary limit of the changes constituting evolution.

13. Dissolution is the counter-change which
sooner or later every evolved aggregate undergoes.
Remaining exposed to surrounding forces that are
unequilibrated, each aggregate is ever liable to be
dissipated by the increase, gradual or sudden, of its
contained motion; and its dissipation, quickly under-
gone by bodies lately animate, and slowly undergone
by inanimate masses, remains to be undergone at an

198

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

indefinitely remote period by each planetary and
stellar mass, which since an indefinitely distant
period in the past has been slowly evolving; the
cycle of its transformations being thus completed.

14. This rhythm of evolution and dissolution,
completing itself during short periods in small ag-
gregates, and in the vast aggregates distributed
through space completing itself in periods immeasur-
able by human thought, is, so far as we can see, uni-
versal and eternal — each alternating phase of the
process predominating now in this region of space
and now in that, as local conditions determine.

15. All these phenomena, from their great fea-
tures down to their minutest details, are necessary
results of the persistence of force under its forms of
matter and motion. Given these as distributed
through space, and their quantities being unchange-
able, either by increase or decrease, there inevitably
result the continuous redistributions distinguishable
as evolution and dissolution, as well as all these spe-
cial traits above enumerated.

16. That which persists unchanging in quantity,
but ever changing in form, under these sensible ap-
pearances which the universe presents to us, tran-
scends human knowledge and conception — is an un-
known and unknowable power, which we are obliged
to recognise as without limit in space and without
beginning or end in time.

All that is comprised in the dozen volumes which,
exclusive of the minor works and the Sociological

MODERN EVOLUTION.

199

Tables, form the great body of the Synthetic Phi-
losophy, is the expansion of this abstract. The gen-
eral lines laid down in that Philosophy have become
a permanent way along which investigation will con-
tinue to travel. The revisions which may be called
for will not affect it fundamentally, being limited to
details, more especially in the settlement of the rela-
tive functions of individuals and communities, and
cognate questions. Into these we cannot enter here.
Suffice it, that to those who have the rare possession
of sound mental peptics, no more nutritive diet can
be recommended than is supplied by First Princi-
ples and the works in which its theses are developed.
For those who, blessed with good digestion, lack
leisure, there is provided in a convenient volume the
excellent epitome which Mr. Howard Collins has
prepared.

The prospectus of the then proposed issue of the
series of works which, beginning with First Princi-
ples, ends with the Principles of Sociology (1862-
1896), was issued by Mr. Spencer in March, i860.
Through his courtesy the writer has seen the docu-
ments which prove that the first draft of that pro-
spectus was written out on the 6th of January, 1858,
and that it was the occasion of an interesting corre-
spondence between Mr. Spencer and his father —
mainly in the form of questions from the latter — dur-
ing that month. The record of these facts is of some
moment as evidencing that the scheme of the Syn-
thetic Philosophy took definite shape in 1857. There-

200 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

fore, the Theory of Evolution, dealing with the uni-
verse as a whole, was formulated some months before
the publication of the Darwin- Wallace paper, in which
only organic evolution was discussed. The Origin of
Species, as the outcome of that paper, showed that
the action of natural selection is a sufficing cause for
the production of new life-forms, and thus knocked
the bottom out of the old belief in special creation.

The general doctrine of Evolution, however, is
not so vitally related to that of natural selection that
the two stand or fall together. The evidence as to
the connection between the succession of past life-
forms which, regard being had to the well-nigh ob-
literated record, has been supplied by the fossil-
yielding rocks; and the evidence as to the unbroken
development of the highest plants and animals from
the lowest which more and rriore confirms the theory
of Von Baer; alike furnish a body of testimony plac-
ing the doctrine of Organic Evolution on a founda-
tion that can never be shaken. And, firm as that,
stands the doctrine of Inorganic Evolution upon the
support given by modern science to the speculations
of Immanuel Kant.

There is the more need for laying stress on this
because recent discussions, revealing divided opin-
ions among biologists as to the sufficiency of natural
selection as a cause of all modifications in the struc-
ture of living things, lead timid or half-informed
minds to hope that the doctrine of Evolution may yet
turn out not to be true. It is in such stratum of intel-

MODERN EVOLUTION. 2OI

ligence that there lurks the feeHng, whenever some
old inscription or monument verifying statements
in the Bible is discovered, that the infallibility of that
book has further proof. For example, until the pres-
ent year, not a single confirmatory piece of evidence
as to the story of the Exodus was forthcoming from
Egypt itself. Even the inscription which has come
to light does not, in the judgment of such an expert
as Dr. Flinders Petrie, supply the exact confirmation
desired. But let that irrefragable witness appear,
and while the historian will welcome it as evidence
of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, thus throw-
ing light on the movements of races, and adding
to the historical value of the Pentateuch; the aver-
age orthodox believer will feel a vague sort of satis-
faction that the foundations of his belief in the Trin-
ity and the Incarnation are somehow strengthened.

3. Thomas Henry Huxley.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing, on
the 4th of May, 1825. Montaigne tells us that he
was " borne between eleven of the clock and noone,"
and, with like quaint precision, Huxley gives the
hour of his birth as " about eight o'clock in the
morning." Speaking of his first Christian name, he
humorously said that, by curious chance, his parents
chose that of the particular apostle with whom, as
the doubting member of the twelve, he had always
felt most sympathy.

Concerning his father, who was '' one of the mas-
14

202 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

ters in a large semi-public school " (the father of
Herbert Spencer, it will be remembered, was also a
schoolmaster), Huxley has little to say in the slight
autobiographical sketch reprinted as an introduction
to the first volume of the Collected Essays. On that
side, he tells us, he could find hardly any trace in
himself, except a certain faculty for drawing, and a
certain hotness of temper. '' Physically and men-
tally," he was the son of his mother, " a slender
brunette, of an emotional and energetic tempera-
ment." His school training was brief and profitless;
his tastes were mechanical, and but for lack of means,
he would have started life in the same profession
which Herbert Spencer followed till he forsook
Messrs. Fox's office for journalism. So, with a cer-
tain shrinking from anatomical work, Huxley studied
medicine for a time under a relative, and in his seven-
teenth year entered the Charing Cross Hospital
School as a student. In those days there was no in-
struction in physics, and only in such branch of
chemistry as dealt with the nature of drugs. Non
multa, sed midtum, and what was lacking in breadth
was, perhaps, gained in thoroughness. Huxley had
as excellent a teacher in Wharton Jones as the latter
had a promising pupil in Huxley, and in working
with the microscope, the evidence of that came in
his discovery of a certain root-sheath in the hair,
which has since then been known as " Huxley's
layer."

Up to the time of his studentship, he had been

MODERN EVOLUTION.

203

left, intellectually, altogether to his own devices.
He tells us that he was a voracious and omnivorous
reader, " a dreamer and speculator of the first water,
well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking
any and every subject which is the blessed compensa-
tion of youth and inexperience." Among the books
and essays that impressed him were Guizot's History
of Civilization; and Sir William Hamilton's essay
On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned which he
accidentally came upon in an odd volume of the
Edinburgh Review. This, he adds, was " devoured
with avidity," and it stamped upon his mind the
strong conviction " that on even the most solemn
and important of questions, men are apt to take
cunning phrases for answers; and that the limitation
of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders
real answers to such questions, not merely actually
impossible, but theoretically inconceivable." Thus,
before he was out of his teens, the philosophy that
ruled his life-teaching was taking definite shape.

In 1845, he won his M. B. London with honours
in anatomy and physiology, and after a few months'
practice at the East End, applied, at the instance of
his senior fellow-student, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Joseph
Fayrer, for an appointment in the medical service of
the Navy. At the end of two months he was for-
tunate enough to be entered on the books of Nelson's
old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital.
His ofificial chief was the famous Arctic Explorer, Sir
John Richardson, through whose recommendation

204 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

he was appointed, seven months later, assistant sur-
geon of the Rattlesnake. That ship, commanded by
Captain Owen Stanley, was commissioned to survey
the intricate passage within the Barrier Reef skirting
the eastern shores of AustraHa, and to explore the
sea lying between the northern end of that reef and
New Guinea. It was the best apprenticeship to what
was eventually the work of Huxley's life — the solu-
tion of biological problems and the indication of their
far-reaching significance. Darwin and Hooker had
passed through a like marine curriculum. The for-
mer served as naturalist on board the Beagle when
she sailed on her voyage round the world in 1831;
the latter as assistant-surgeon on board the Erebus
on her Antarctic Expedition in 1839. Fortune was
to bring the three shoulder to shoulder when the
battle against the theory of the immutability of spe-
cies was fought.

During his four-years' absence Huxley, in whom
the biologist dominated the doctor, made observa-
tions on the various marine animals collected. These
he sent home to the Linnsean Society in vain hope of
acceptance. A more elaborate paper to the Royal
Society, communicated through the Bishop of- Nor-
wich (author of a book on birds, and father of Dean
Stanley), secured the coveted honour of publication,
and on Huxley's return in 1850 a " huge packet of
separate copies " awaited him. It dealt with the
anatomy and affinities of the Medusae, and the origi-
nal research which it evidenced justified his election

MODERN EVOLUTION.

205

in 185 1 to the fellowship of the society whose presi-
dential chair he was in after years to adorn. He
would seem to have won the blue ribbon of science
^er saltum. Probably, so far as their biological value
is concerned, nothing that he did subsequently has
surpassed his contributions to scientific literature at
that period; but if his services to knowledge had
been limited to the class of work which they repre-
sent, he would have remained only a distinguished
specialist. Further recognition of his well-won posi-
tion came in the award of the society's royal medal.
But fellowships and medals keep no wolf from the
door, and Huxley was a poor man. After vain at-
tempts to obtain, first, a professorship of physiology
in England, and then a chair of natural history at
Toronto (Tyndall was at the same time an unsuc-
cessful candidate for the chair of physics in the same
university), a settled position was secured by Sir
Henry de la Beche's offer of the professorship of
palaeontology and of the lectureship on natural his-
tory in the Royal School of Mines, vacated by Ed-
ward Forbes. That was in 1854. Between that date
and the time of his return Huxley had contributed
a number of valuable papers on the structure of the
invertebrates, and on histology, or the science of
tissues. But these, while adding to his established
qualifications for a scientific appointment, demand
no detailed reference here. With both chairs there
was united the curatorship of the fossil collections
in the Museum of Practical Geology, and these, with

2o6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

the inspectorship of salmon fisheries, which office he
accepted in 1881, complete the list of Huxley's more
important public appointments. He surrendered
them all in 1885, having reached the age at which,
as he jocosely remarked to the writer, " Every sci-
entific man ought to be poleaxed." Perhaps he
dreaded the conservatism of attitude, the non-recep-
tivity to new ideas, which often accompany old age.
But for himself such fears were needless. He was
never of robust constitution; in addition to the last-
ing effects of an illness in boyhood, Carlyle's " ac-
cursed Hag," dyspepsia, which troubled both Dar-
win and Bates for the rest of their lives after their
return from abroad, troubled him. Therefore, con-
siderations of health mainly prompted the surrender
of his varied official responsibilities, the loyal dis-
charge of which met with becoming recognition in
the grant of a pension. This secured a modest com-
petence in the evening of life to one who had never
been wealthy, and who had never coveted wealth.
To Huxley may fitly be applied what Faraday said
of himself, that he had " no time to make money."
And yet, to his abiding discredit, the present editor
of Punch allowed his theological animus, which had
already been shown in abortive attempts in the pages
of that " facetious " journal to appraise a Roman
Catholic biologist at the expense of Huxley, to fur-
ther degrade itself by affixing the letters " L. S. D."
to his name in a character-sketch.

His public life may be said to date from 1854.

MODERN EVOLUTION.

207

The duties which he then undertook included the
deHvery of a course of lectures to working men
every alternate year. Some of these — models of
their kind — have been reissued in the Collected Es-
says. Among the most notable are those on Our
Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Or-
ganic Nature. At the outset of his public career
lecturing was as distasteful to him as in earlier years
the trouble of writing was detestable. But mother
wit and " needs must " trained him in a short time
to win the ear of an audience. One evening in 1852
he made his debut at the Royal Institution, and the
next day he received a letter charging him with
every possible fault that a lecturer could commit —
ungraceful stoop, awkwardness in use of hands,
mumbHng of words, or dropping them down the
shirt front. The lesson was timely, and its effect
salutary. Huxley was fgnd of telling this story, and
it is worth recording — if but as encouragement to
stammerers who have something to say — at what
price he " bought this freedom " which held an
audience spellbound. How he thus held it in later
years they will remember who in the packed theatre
of the Royal Institution listened on the evening of
Friday, 9th of April, 1880, to his lecture On the Com-
ing of Age of the Origin of Species.

In 1856 Huxley visited the glaciers of the Alps
with Tyndall, the result appearing in their joint
authorship of a paper on Glacial Phenomena in the
Philosophical Transactions of the following year.

2o8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

But this was a rare interlude. What time could be
wrested from daily routine was given to the study of
invertebrate and vertebrate morphology, palaeon-
tology, and ethnology, familiarity with which was no
mean equipment for the conflict soon to rage round
these seemingly pacific materials when their deep
import was declared. The outcome of such varied
industry is apparent to the student of scientific me-
moirs. But a recital of the titles of papers con-
tributed to these, as e. g.. On Ceratodus, Hypero-
dapedon Gordoni, Hypsilophodon, Telerpeton, and
so forth, will not here tend to edification. The
original and elaborate investigations which they em-
body have had recognition in the degrees and medals
which decorated the illustrious author. But it is not
by these that Huxley's renown as one of the most
richly-endowed and widely-cultured personalities of
the Victorian era will endure. They might sink into
the oblivion which buries most purely technical work
without in any way affecting that foremost place
which he fills in the ranks of philosophical biolo-
gists both as clear-headed thinker and luminous in-
terpreter.

In this high function the publication of the Ori-
gin of Species gave him his opportunity. That was
in 1859. As with Hooker and Bates, his experiences
as a traveller, and, more than this, his penetrating
inquiry into significances and relations, prepared his
mind for acceptance of the theory of descent with
modification of living forms from one stock. Hence

MODERN EVOLUTION.

209

the mutability, as against the old theory of the fixity,
of species.

In the chapter On the Reception of the Origin
of Species, which Huxley contributed to Darwin's
Life and Letters, he gives an interesting account of
his attitude toward that burning question. He
says —

" I think that I must have read the Vestiges (see
p. 119) before I left England in 1846, but if I did
the book made very little impression upon me, and
I was not brought into serious contact with the
' species ' question until after 1850. At that time I
had long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony
which had been impressed upon my childish under-
standing as Divine truth with all the authority of
parents and instructors, and from which it had cost
me many a struggle to get free. But my mind was
unbiassed in respect of any doctrine which presented
itself if it professed to be based on purely philo-
sophical and scientific reasoning. ... I had not then
and I have not now the smallest a priori objection to
raise to the account of the creation of animals and
plants given in Paradise Lost, in which Milton so
vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far
be it from me to say that it is untrue because it
is impossible. I confine myself to what must be
regarded as a modest and reasonable request for
some particle of evidence that the existing species of
animals and plants did originate in that way as a

2IO PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

condition of my belief in a statement which appears
to me to be highly improbable. . . .

" And by way of being perfectly fair, I had ex-
actly the same answer to give to the evolutionists
of 1851-58. Within the ranks of the biologists of
that time I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of
University College, who had a word to say for Evo-
lution, and his advocacy was not calculated to ad-
vance the cause. Outside these ranks the only per-
son known to me whose knowledge and capacity
compelled respect, and who was at the same time a
thoroughgoing evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spen-
cer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852,
and then entered into the bonds of a friendship
which I am happy to think has known no interrup-
tion. Many and prolonged were the battles we
fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare dia-
lectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could
not drive me from my agnostic position. I took my
stand upon two grounds : firstly, that up to that time
the evidence in favour of transmutation was wholly
insufficient; and secondly, that no suggestion re-
specting the causes of the transmutation assumed
which had been made was in any way adequate to
explain the phenomena. Looking back at the state
of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that
any other conclusion was justifiable.

" As I have already said, I imagine that most of
those of my contemporaries who thought seriously
about the matter were very much in my own state

MODERN EVOLUTION. 21 1

of mind — inclined to say to both Mosaists and Evo-
lutionists ' A plague on both your houses ! ' and
disposed to turn aside from an interminable and ap-
parently fruitless discussion to labour in the fertile
fields of ascertainable fact. And I may therefore
further suppose that the pubHcation of the Darwin
and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of
the Origin in 1859, had the effect upon them of the
flash of light, which to a man who has lost him-
self in a dark night suddenly reveals a road which,
whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly
goes his way. That which we were looking for and
could not find was a hypothesis respecting the origin
of known organic forms which assumed the opera-
tion of no causes but such as could be proved to be
actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith
to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of
clear and definite conceptions which could be
brought face to face with facts, and have their
validity tested. The Origin provided us with the
working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the
immense service of freeing us for ever from the di-
lemma— refuse to accept the creation hypothesis,
and what have you to propose that can be accepted
by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer
ready, and I do not think that any one else had.
A year later we reproached ourselves with dulness for
being perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection,
when I first made myself master of the central idea
of the Origin was ' How extremely stupid not to

212 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

have thought of that!' I suppose that Columbus's
companions said much the same when he made the
t.^% stand on end. The facts of variabihty, of the
struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions,
were notorious enough, but none of us had suspected
that the road to the heart of the species problem lay
through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled
the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the Origin
guided the benighted."

But the disciple soon outstripped the master.
As was said of Luther in relation to Erasmus, Hux-
ley hatched the ^%^ that Darwin laid. For in the
Origin of Species the theory was not pushed to its
obvious conclusion: Darwin only hinted that it
" would throw much light on the origin of man and
his history." His silence, as he candidly tells us in
the Introduction to the Descent of Man, was due to
a desire " not to add to the prejudices against his
views." No such hesitancy kept Huxley silent. In
the spirit of Plato's Laws, he followed the argument
whithersoever it led. In i860 he delivered a course
of lectures to working-men On the Relations of Man
to the Lower Animals, and in 1862, a couple of lec-
tures on the same subject at the Edinburgh Philo-
sophical Institution. The important and significant
feature of these discourses was the demonstration
that no cerebral barrier divides man from apes; that
the attempt to draw a psychical distinction between
him and the lower animals is futile ; and that " even
the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin

MODERN EVOLUTION.

213

to germinate in lower forms of life." The lectures
were published in 1863 in a volume entitled Evidence
as to Man's Place in Nature; and it was with pride
warranted by the results of subsequent researches
that Huxley, in a letter to the writer, thus refers to
the book when arranging for its reissue among the
Collected Essays —

I was looking through Man's Place in Nature the other
day. I do not think there is a word I need delete, nor any-
thing I need add, except in confirmation and extension of the
doctrine there laid down. That is great good fortune for a
book thirty years old, and one that a very shrewd friend of
mine implored me not to publish, as it would certainly ruin all
my prospects.

The sparse annotations to the whole series of re-
printed matter show that the like permanence at-
tends all his writings. And yet, true workman,
with ideal ever lying ahead, as he was, he remarked
to the writer that never did a book come hot from
the press, but he wished that he could suppress it
and rewrite it.

But before dealing with the momentous issues
raised in Man's Place in Nature, we must return
to i860. For that was the " Sturm und Drang "
period. Then, at Oxford, " home of lost causes," as
Matthew Arnold apostrophizes her in the Preface to
his Essays in Criticism, was fought, on Saturday,
30th of June, a memorable duel between biologist and
bishop; perhaps in its issues, more memorable than
the historic discussion on the traditional doctrine of

214 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

special creation between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-
Hilaire in the French Academy in 1830.

Both Huxley and Wilberforce were doughty
champions. The scene of combat, the Museum
Library, was crammed to suffocation. Fainting
women were carried out. There had been '' words "
between Owen and Huxley on the previous Thurs-
day. Owen contended that there were certain funda-
mental differences between the brains of man and
apes. Huxley met this with " direct and unqualified
contradiction," and pledged himself to " justify that
unusual procedure elsewhere." No wonder that the
atmosphere was electric. The bishop was up to
time. Declamation usurped the vacant place of ar-
gument in his speech, and the declamation became
acrid. He finished his harangue by asking Huxley
whether he was related by his grandfather's or
grandmother's side to an ape. " The Lord hath de-
livered him into my hands," whispered Huxley to
a friend at his side, as he rose to reply. After set-
ting his opponent an example in demonstrating his
case by evidence which, although refuting Owen,
evoked no admission of error from him then or ever
after, Huxley referred to the personal remark of
Wilberforce. And this is what he said —

I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were
an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be
a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not con-
tent with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity,
plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real

MODERN EVOLUTION.

215

acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and
distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue
by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious preju-
dice.

Perhaps the best comment on a piece of what is
now ancient history is to quote the admissions made
by Lord Salisbury — a rigid High Churchman — in
his presidential address to the British Association in
this same city of Oxford in 1894 —

Few now are found to doubt that animals separated by
differences far exceeding those that distinguish what we know
as species have yet descended from common ancestors. . . .
Darwin has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of
the immutability of species.

Few, also, are now found to doubt not only that
doctrine, but also the doctrine that all life-forms
have a common origin; plants and animals being
alike built-up of matter which is identical in char-
acter. This doctrine, to-day a commonplace of bi-
ology, was, thirty years ago, rank heresy, since it
seemed to reduce the soul of man to the level of his
biliary duct. Hence the Oxford storm was but a
capful of wind compared with that which raged
round Huxley's lecture on The Physical Basis of
Life delivered, thus aggravating the ofifence, on a
"Sabbath" evening in Edinburgh in 1868. People
had settled down, with more or less vague under-
standing of the matter, into quiescent acceptance of
Darwinism. And now their somnolence was rudely
shaken by this Southron troubler of Israel, with his
production of a bottle of solution of smelling salts.

2i6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

and a pinch or two of other ingredients, which repre-
sented the elementary substances entering into the
composition of every Hving thing from a jelly-speck
to man. Well might the removal of the stopper to
that bottle take their breath away! Microscopists,
philosophers " so-called," and clerics alike raised the
cry of " gross materiahsm," never pausing to read
Huxley's anticipatory answer to the baseless charge,
an answer repeated again and again in his writings,
as in the essay on Descartes's Discourse touching
the method of using one's reason rightly, and in his
Hume. In season and out of season he never wearies
In insisting that there is nothing in the doctrine in-
consistent with the purest idealism. " All the phe-
nomena of Nature are, in their ultimate analysis,
known to us only as facts of consciousness." The
cyclone thus raised travelled westward on the heels
of Tyndall, when in 1874 he asserted the funda-
mental identity of the organic and inorganic; dash-
ing, as his Celtic blood stirred him, the statements
with a touch of poetry in the famous phrase that
" the genius of Newton was potential in the fires of
the sun."

The ancient belief in " spontaneous generation,"
which Redi's experiments upset, was the subject of
Huxley's Presidential Address to the British Asso-
ciation in 1870. But while he showed how subse-
quent investigation confirmed the doctrine of Abio-
genesis, or the non-production of living from dead
matter, he made this statement in support of Tyn-

MODERN EVOLUTION.

217

dall's creed as to the fundamental unity of the vital
and the non-vital.

" Looking back through the prodigious vista of
the past, I find no record of the commencement of
life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of
forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions
of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of
the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong
foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted ab-
sence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the
mode in which the existing forms of life have origi-
nated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But
expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if
it were given to me to look beyond the abyss of
geologically recorded time to the still more remote
period when the earth was passing through physical
and chemical conditions which it can no more see
again than a man can recall his infancy, I should
expect to be a witness of the evolution of living
protoplasm from non-living matter. I should expect
to see it appear under forms of great simplicity,
endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of de-
termining the formation of new protoplasm from
such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates, and
tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water,
without the aid of light. That is the expectation to
which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you
once more to recollect that I have no right to call
my opinion anything but an act of philosophical

faith."

15

2i8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Huxley was the Apostle Paul of the Darwinian
movement, and one main result of his active propa-
gandism was to so effectively prepare the way for
the reception of the profounder issues involved in
the theory of the origin of species, that the publica-
tion of Darwin's Descent of Man in 1871 created
mild excitement. And the weight of his support is
the greater because he never omitted to lay stress on
the obscurity which still hides the causes of variation
which, it must be kept in mind, natural selection
cannot bring about, and on which it can only act.
He insists on the non-implication of the larger the-
ory with its subordinate parts, or with the fate of
them. The " doctrine of Evolution is a generalisa-
tion of certain facts which may be observed by any
one who will take the necessary trouble." The facts
are those which biologists class under the heads of
Embryology and Palaeontology, to the conclusions
from which " all future philosophical and theological
speculations will have to accommodate themselves."

That is the direction of the revolution to which
the pubHcation of Man's Place in Nature gav-e im-
petus; and it is in the all-round application of the
theory of man's descent that Huxley stands fore-
most, both as leader and lawgiver. Mr. Spencer has
never shrunk from controversy, but he has not for-
saken the study for the arena, and hence his influ-
ence, great and abiding as it is, has been less direct
and personal than that of his comrade, " ever a
fighter," who, in Browning's words, " marched breast

MODERN EVOLUTION.

219

forward." Man's Place in Nature was the first of a
series of deliverances upon the most serious ques-
tions that can occupy the mind; and its successors,
the brilliant monograph on Hume, published in
1879, and the Romanes Lecture on Evolution and
Ethics, delivered at Oxford, i8th of May, 1893, are
but expansions of the thesis laid dow^n in that won-
derful little volume; wonderful in the prevision which
fills it, and in the justification which it has received
from all subsequent research, notably in psychology.
If the propositions therein maintained are un-
shaken, then there is no possible reconciliation be-
tween Evolution and Theology, and all the smooth
sayings in attempted harmonies between the two,
of which Professor Drummond's Ascent of Man is a
type, and in speeches at Church Congresses of which
that delivered by Archdeacon Wilson (see p. 161) is
a type, do but hypnotize the '' light half-believers of
our casual creeds." To some there are " signs of the
times " which point to approaching acquiescence in
the sentiment of Ovid, paralleled by a famous pas-
sage in Gibbon, that " the existence of the gods is a
matter of public policy, and we must believe it ac-
cordingly." It looks like the prelude to surrender
of what is the cardinal dogma of Christianity when
we read in the Archdeacon's address that " the the-
ory of Evolution is indeed fatal to certain quasi-
mythological doctrines of the Atonement which once
prevailed, but it is in harmony with its spirit." For
those doctrines, as the Venerable apologist may learn

220 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

from the evidence in Frazer's Golden Bough (chap,
iii, passim), are wholly mythological, because bar-
baric. But, in truth, there is not a dogma of Chris-
tendom, not a foundation on which the dogma rests,
that Evolution does not traverse. The Church of
England adopts " as thoroughly to be received and
believed," the three ancient creeds, known as the
Apostles', the Athanasian, and the Nicene. There
is not a sentence in any one of these which finds
confirmation; and only a sentence or two that find
neither confirmation nor contradiction, in Evolution.
The question, on which reams of paper have been
wasted, lies in a nutshell. The statements in the
Creeds profess to have warrant in the direct words
of the Bible; or in inferences drawn from those
words, as defined by the Councils of the Church.
fThe decisions of these Councils represent the opinion
j/ /of the majority of fallible men composing those as-
/ semblies, and no number of fallible parts can make
1 an infallible whole. As Selden quaintly puts it
(Table Talk, xxx. Councils), " they talk (but blas-
phemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is president
of their General Councils, when the truth is the odd
man is still the Holy Ghost." With this same " odd
man " rested the decision as to what books should
be included or excluded from the collection on which
the Church bases its authority and formulates its
creeds. So, in the last result, both sets of questions
are settled "by a human tribunal employing a circular
argument. But, dismissing this for the moment, let

MODERN EVOLUTION. 221

US see to what issues the controversy is narrowed, to
quote Huxley's words (written in 1871), by " the
spontaneous retreat of the enemy from nine-tenths
of the territory which he occupied ten years ago."

The battle has no longer to be fought over the
question of the fundamental identity of the physical
structure of man and of the anthropoid apes. The
most enlightened Protestant divines accept this as
proven; and not a few Catholic divines are adopting
an attitude toward it which is only the prelude to
surrender. Matters must have moved apace in the
Church which Huxley, backed by history, describes
as " that vigorous and consistent enemy of the high-
est intellectual, moral, and social life of mankind,"
to permit the Roman Catholic Professor of Physics
in the University of Notre Dame, America, to parley
as follows:

" Granting that future researches in palaeontol-
ogy, anthropology, and biology, shall demonstrate
beyond doubt that man is genetically related to the
inferior animals, and we have seen how far scientists
are from such a demonstration (?), there will not be,
even in such an improbable event, the slightest
ground for imagining that then, at last, the con-
clusions of science are hopelessly at variance with
the declarations of the sacred text, or the authorised
teachings of the Church of Christ. All that would
logically follow from the demonstration of the animal
origin of man, would be a modification of the tradi-
tional view regarding the origin of the body of our

222 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

first ancestor. We should be obliged to revise the
interpretation that has usually been given to the
words of Scripture which refer to the formation of
Adam's body, and read these words in the sense
which Evolution demands, a sense which, as we
have seen, may be attributed to the words of the
inspired record, without either distorting the mean-
ing of terms, or in any way doing violence to the
text " (Evolution and Dogma. By the Reverend J.
A. Zahm, Ph. D., C. S. C, pp. 364, 365).

Upon this suggested revision of writings which
are claimed as forming part of a divine revelation,
one of the highest authorities, Francisco Suarez, thus
refers, in his Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum, to the
elastic interpretation given in his time to the " days "
in the first chapter of Genesis. " It is not probable
that God, in inspiring Moses to write a history of
the Creation, which was to be believed by ordinary
people, would have made him use language the true
meaning of which it was hard to discover, and still
harder to believe." Three centuries have passed
since these wise words were penned, and the reproof
which they convey is as much needed now as then.

In near connection with the question of man's
origin is that of his antiquity. The existence of his
remains, rare as they are everywhere, in deposits
older than the Pleistocene or Quaternary Epoch is
not proven. This applies to the remarkable frag-
ments found by Dr. Dubois in Java, the character of
which, in the judgment of several palaeontologists,

MODERN EVOLUTION,

223

indicates the nearest approach between man and ape
hitherto discovered. But the evidence of the physical
relation of these two being conclusive, the exact
place of man in the earth's time-record is rendered
of subordinate importance.

The theologians have come to their last ditch in v»-.a
contesting that the mental differences between man ^
and the lower animals are fundamental, being differ- ^ \
ences of kind, and therefore that no gradual process *" '
from the mental faculties of the one to those of the w s
other has taken place. This struggle against the ap- ^ ^
plication of the theory of Evolution to man's intel- ^ ^
lectual and spiritual nature will be long and stub-
born. It is a matter of life and death to the theo- \. ^
logian to show that he has m revelation, and in the , '
world-wide belief of mankind in spiritual existences ^ -'^
without, and in a spirit or soul within, evidence of the < 7
supernatural. The evolutionist has no such corre- ^ I
sponding deep concern. When the argument against '
him is adduced from the Bible, he can only challenge
the ground on which that book is cited as divine
authority, or as an authority at all. Granting, for ' . L
the sake of argument, that a revelation has been
made, the writings purporting to contain it must \
comply with the twofold condition attaching to it, ; -
namely, that it makes known matters which the f, L c
human mind could not, unaided, have found out;!'V £
and that it embodies those matters in language as'f' V^
to the meaning of which there can be no doubt what^ > \
ever. If there be any sacred books which comply-' >

k

3

224 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

with these conditions, they have yet to be discov-
ered.

When the argument against the evolutionist is
drawn from human testimony, he does not dispute
the existence of the beHef in a soul and in all the
accompanying apparatus of the supernatural; but he
calls in the anthropologist to explain how these arose
in the barbaric mind.

Meanwhile, let us summarize the evidence which
points to the psychical unity between man and the
lower life-forms. As stated on p. 187, Mr. Herbert
Spencer traces the gradual evolution of conscious-
ness from " the blurred, indeterminate feeling which
responds to a single nerve pulsation or shock."
There is no trace of a nervous system in the simplest
organisms, but this counts for little, because there
are also no traces of a mouth, or a stomach, or limbs.
In these seemingly structureless creatures every part
does everything. The amoeba eats and drinks, di-
gests and excretes, manifests *' irritability," that is,
responds to the various stimuli of its surroundings,
and multiplies, without possessing special organs for
these various functions. Division of labour arises at
a slightly higher stage, when rudimentary organs ap-
pear; the development of function and organ going
on simultaneously.

Speaking broadly, the functions of living things
are threefold: they feed; they reproduce; they re-
spond to their " environment," and it is this last-
named function — communication with surroundings

MODERN EVOLUTION. 225

— which is the special work of the nervous system.
It was an old Greek maxim that " a man may once
say a thing as he would have said it: he cannot say
it twice." This is the warrant for transferring a few
sentences on the origin of the nerves from my Story
of Creation. They are but a meagre abstract of Mr.
Spencer's long, but luminous exposition of the sub-
ject.

" As every part of an organism is made up of
cells, and as the functions govern the form of the
cells, the origin of nerves must be due to a modifica-
tion in cell shape and arrangement, whereby certain
tracts or fibres of communication between the body
and its surroundings are established.

" But what excited that modification? The all-
surrounding medium, without which no life had
been, which determined its limits, and touches it at
every point with its throbs and vibrations. In the
beginnings of a primitive layer or skin manifested
by creatures a stage above the lowest, unlikenesses
would arise, and certain parts, by reason of their
finer structure, would be the more readily stimulated
by, and the more quickly responsive to, the ceaseless
action of the surroundings, the result being that
an extra sensitiveness along the lines of least re-
sistance would be set up in those more delicate
parts. These, developing, like all things else, by use,
would become more and more the selected paths of
the impulses, leading, as the molecular waves thrilled
them, to structural changes or modification into

226 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

nerve-cells, and nerve-fibres, of increasing complex-
ity as we ascend the scale of life. The entire nervous
system, with its connections; the brain and all the
subtle mechanism with which it controls the body;
the organs of the senses alike begin as sacs formed
by infoldings of the primitive outer skin."

Biologists are agreed that a certain stage in the
organization of the nervous system — ^the germs of
which, we saw, are visible in the quivering of an
amoeba, and probably in plants as well as animals
— must be reached before consciousness is manifest.
Obscurity still hangs round the stage at which mere
irritability passes into sensibility, but so long as the
continuity of development is clear, the gradations
are of lesser importance. And, for the present pur-
pose, there is no need to descend far in the life-scale;
if the psychical connection between man and the
mammals immediately beneath him is proven, the
connection of the mammals with the lowest inver-
tebrate may be assumed as also established. Speak-
ing only of vertebrates, the brain being, whether in
fish or man, the organ of mental phenomena, how
far does its structure support or destroy the theory
of mental continuity? In Man's Place in Nature,
and its invaluable supplement, the second part of
the monograph on Hume, this subject is expounded
by Huxley with his usual clearness. In the older
book he traces the gradual modification of brain in
the series of backboned animals. He points out that
the brain of a fish is very small compared with the

MODERN EVOLUTION. 22/

Spinal cord into which it is continued, that in reptiles
the mass of brain, relatively to the spinal cord, is
larger, and still larger in birds, until among the low-
est mammals, as the opossums and kangaroos, the
brain is so increased in proportion as to be extremely
different from that of fish, bird, or reptile. Between
these marsupials and the highest or placental mam-
mals, there occurs " the greatest leap anywhere made
by Nature in her brain work." Then follows this
important statement in favour of continuity.

" As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the
impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between
man and the apes. Nature has provided us, in the
latter animals, with an almost complete series of
gradations from brains little higher than that of a
Rodent to brains little lower than that of Man."
After giving technical descriptions in proof of this,
and laying special stress on the presence of the
structure known as the " hippocampus minor " in
the brain of man as well as of the ape — in the de-
nial of which Owen cut such a sorry figure, Huxley
adds:

" So far as cerebral structure goes, therefore, it is
clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or
the Orang than these do even from the Monkeys,
and that the difference between the brains of the
Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant when
compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain
and that of a Lemur. . . . Thus, whatever system of
organs be studied, the comparison of their modifica-

228 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

tions in the ape series leads to one and the same
result, — that the structural differences which separate
Man from the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee are not so
great as those which separate the Gorilla from the
lower apes. But in enunciating this important truth
I must guard myself against a form of misunder-
standing which is very prevalent . . . that the struc-
tural differences between man and even the highest
apes are small and insignificant. Let me then dis-
tinctly assert, on the contrary, that they are great
and significant; that every bone of a Gorilla bears
marks by which it might be distinguished from the
corresponding bone of a Man; and that, in the pres-
ent creation, at any rate, no intermediate link bridges
over the gap between Homo and Troglodytes. It
would be no less wrong than absurd to deny the ex-
istence of this chasm; but it is at least equally wrong
and absurd to exaggerate its magnitude, and, rest-
ing on the admitted fact of its existence, to refuse to
inquire whether it is wide or narrow. Remember, if
you will, that there is no existing link between Man
and the Gorilla, but do not forget that there is a no
less sharp line of demarcation, a no less complete
absence of any traditional form, between the Gorilla
and the Orang, or the Orang and the Gibbon."

The brains of man and ape being fundamentally
the same in structure, it follows that the functions
which they perform are fundamentally the same.
The large array of facts mustered by a series of
careful observers prove how futile is the argument

MODERN EVOLUTION.

229

which, in his pride of birth, man advances against
psychical continuity. Vain is the search after
boundary Hues between reflex action and instinct,
and between instinct and reason. Barriers there are
between man and brute, for articulate speech and
the consequent power to transmit experiences has
set up these, and they remain impassable. " The
potentialities of language, as the vocal symbol of
thought, lay in the faculty of modulating and articu-
lating the voice. The potentialities of writing, as
the visual symbol of thought, lay in the hand that
could draw, and in the mimetic tendency which
we know was gratified by drawing as far back as
the days of Quaternary man " (Huxley's Essays on
Controverted Questions, p. 47). But these specially
human characteristics are no sufficing warrant for
denying that the sensations, emotions, thoughts, and
volitions of man vary in kind from those of the
lower creation. " The essential resemblances in all
points of structure and function, so far as they can
be studied, between the nervous system of man and
that of the dog, leave no reasonable doubt that the
processes which go on in the one are just like those
which take place in the other. In the dog, there can
be no doubt that the nervous matter which lies
between the retina and the muscles undergoes a
series of changes, precisely analogous to those which,
in the man, give rise to sensation, a train of thought,
and volition." This passage occurs in Huxley's
Reply to Mr. Darwin's Critics, which appeared in

230

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the Contemporary Review, 1871, and it may be sup-
plemented by a quotation from the chapter on The
Mental Phenomena of Animals in his Hume. " It
seems hard to assign any good reason for denying
to the higher animals any mental state or process
in which the employment of the vocal or visual
symbols of which language is composed is not in-
volved; and comparative psychology confirms the
position in relation to the rest of the animal world
assigned to man by comparative anatomy. As com-
parative anatomy is easily able to show that, physi-
'cally, man is but the last term of a long series of
forms, which lead, by slow gradations, from the high-
est mammal to the almost formless speck of living
protoplasm, which lies on the shadowy boundary
between animal and vegetable life; so, comparative
psychology, though but a young science, and far
short of her elder sister's growth, points to the same
conclusion."

Within recent years the psychologists are doing
remarkable work in attacking the problem of the
mechanics of mental operations, and already in Eu-
rope and America some thirty laboratories have been
started for experimental work. The subject is some-
what abstruse for detailed reference here, and it must
suffice to say that the psychologist, beginning with
observations upon himself, measuring, for example,
" the degree of sensibility of his own eye to luminous
irritations, or of his own skin to pricking, passes on
to like inquiry into the numerical relations between

MODERN EVOLUTION,

231

the energy of the stimuli of Hght, sound, and so forth,
and the energy of the sensations which they arouse
in the nerve-channels." An excellent summary, with
references to the newest authorities on the subject,
is given by Prince Kropotkin in the Nineteenth
Century of August, 1896.

All this, to the superficial onlooker, seems rank
materialism. But we cannot think without a brain
any more than we can see without eyes, and any
inquiry into the operation of the organ of thought
must run on the same lines as inquiry into the
operations of any other organ of the body. And
the inquiry leaves us at the point whence we began
in so far as any light is thrown on the connection
between the molecular vibrations in nerve-tissue and
the mental processes of which they are the indis-
pensable accompaniment. Changes take place in
some of the thousands of millions of brain-cells in
every thought that we think, and in every emotion
that we feel, but the nexus remains an impenetrable
mystery. Nevertheless, if we may not say that the
brain secretes thought as we say that the liver se-
cretes bile, we may also not say that the mind is
detachable from the nervous system, and that it is
an entity independent of it. Were it this, not only
would it stand outside the ordinary conditions of
development, but it would also maintain the equi-
librium which a dose of narcotics or of alcohol, or
which starvation and gorging alike rapidly upset.'

In his posthumous essay On the Immortality of

232

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

the Soul, Hume says: "Matter and spirit are at
bottom equally unknown, and we cannot determine
what qualities inhere in the one or in the other."
That is the conclusion to which the wisest come.
And in the ultimate correlation of the physical and
psychical lies the hope of arrival at that terminus of
unity which was the dream of the ancient Greeks,
and to which all inquiry makes approach. How, in
these matters, philosophy is at one, is again seen in
Huxley's admission that " in respect of the great
problems of philosophy, the post-Darwinian genera-
tion is, in one sense, exactly where the prge-Dar-
winian generations were. They remain insoluble.
But the present generation has the advantage of
being better provided with the means of freeing itself
from the tyranny of certain sham solutions."

Science explains, and, in explaining, dissipates
the pseudo-mysteries by which man, in his myth-
making stage, when conception of the order of the
universe was yet unborn, accounted for everything.
But she may borrow the Apostle's words, " Behold!
I show you a mystery," and give to them a pro-
founder meaning as she confesses that the origin and
ultimate destiny of matter and motion; the causes
which determine the behaviour of atoms, whether
they are arranged in the lovely and varying forms
which mark their crystals, or whether they are quiv-
ering with the life which is common to the amoeba
and the man; the conversion of the inorganic into
the organic by the green plant, and the relation be-

MODERN EVOLUTION, 233

tween nerve-changes and consciousness; are all im-
penetrable mysteries.

In his speech on the commemoration of the jubi-
lee of his Professorship in the University of Glasgow
last year, Lord Kelvin said, " I know no more of
electric and magnetic force, or of the relation be-
tween ether, electricity, and ponderable matter, or of
chemical affinity than I knew and tried to teach my
students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my
first session as professor."

This recognition of limitations will content those

who seek not " after a sign." For others, that search

will continue to have encouragement not only from

the theologian, but from the pseudo-scientific who

have travelled some distance with the Pioneers of

Evolution, but who refuse to follow them further.

In each of these there is present the " theological

bias " whose varied forms are skilfully analyzed by

Mr. Spencer in his chapter under that heading in

the Study of Sociology. This explains the attitude

of various groups which are severally represented

by- Mr. St. George Mivart, and the late Dr. W. B.

Carpenter; by Professor Sir Geo. G. Stokes, and Mr.

Alfred Russel Wallace. The first-named is a Roman

Catholic; the second was a Unitarian; the third is

an orthodox Churchman, and the fourth, as already

seen, is a Spiritualist. In his Genesis of Species, Mr.

Mivart contends that *' man's body was evolved from

pre-existing material (symbolised by the term ' dust

of the earth '), and was therefore only derivatively
16

234 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

created, i. e., by the operation of secondary laws,"
but that " his soul, on the other hand, was created in
quite a different way ... by the direct action of
the Almighty (symbolised by the term breathing),"
p. 325. In his Mental Physiology, Dr. Carpenter
postulates an Ego or Will which presides over, with-
out sharing in, the causally determined action of the
other mental functions and their correlated bodily
processes; "an entity which does not depend for its
existence on any play of physical or vital forces, but
which makes these forces subservient to its deter-
minations " (p. 2f). Professor Mivart actually cites
St. Augustine and Cardinal Newman as authorities
in support of his theory of the special creation of the
soul. He might with equal effect subpoena Dr.
Joseph Parker or General Booth as authorities. Dr.
Carpenter argued as became a good Unitarian. In
his Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology, Professor
Stokes asserts, drawing " on sources of information
which lie beyond man's natural powers," in other
words, appealing to the Bible, that God made man
immortal and upright, and endowed him with free-
dom of the will. As, without the exercise of this,
man would have been as a mere automaton, he was
exposed to the temptation of the devil, and fell.
Thereby he became " subject to death like the lower
animals," and by the " natural effect of heredity,"
transmitted the taint of sin to his offspring. The
eternal life thus forfeited was restored by the volun-
tary sacrifice of Christ, but can be secured only to

MODERN EVOLUTION.

235

those who have faith in him. This doctrine, which
is no novel one, is known as '' conditional immor-
taHty." Professor Stokes attaches " no value to the
belief in a future life by metaphysical arguments
founded on the supposed nature of the soul itself,"
and he admits that the purely psychic theory which
would discard the body altogether in regard to the
process of thought is beset by very great difhculties.
So he once more has recourse to " sources of in-
formation which lie beyond man's natural powers."
Following up certain distinctions between " soul "
and " spirit " drawn by the Apostle Paul in his tri-
partite division of man, Professor Stokes, somewhat
in keeping with Dr. Carpenter, assumes an " Ego,
which, on the one hand, is not to be identified with
thought, which may exist while thought is in abey-
ance, and which may, with the future body of which
the Christian religion speaks, be the medium of con-
tinuity of thought. . . . What the nature of this body
might be we do not know; but we are pretty dis-
tinctly informed that it would be something very
different from that of our present body, very different
in its properties and functions, and yet no less our
own than our present body." " Words, words,
words," as Hamlet says.

Reference has been made in some fulness to Mr.
Wallace's limitations of the theory of natural selec-
tion in the case of man's mental faculties. We must
now pursue this somewhat in detail, reminding the
reader of Mr. Wallace's admission that, " provision-

236 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

ally, the laws of variation and natural selection . . .
may have brought about, first, that perfection of
bodily structure in which man is so far above all
other animals, and, in co-ordination with it, the
larger and more developed brain by means of which
he has been able to subject the whole animal and
vegetable kingdoms to his service." But, although
Mr. Wallace rejects the theory of man's special cre-
ation as " being entirely unsupported by facts, as
well as in the highest degree improbable," he con-
tends that it does not necessarily follow that " his
mental nature, even though developed pari passu
with his physical structure, has been developed by
the same agencies." Then, by the introduction of a
physical analogy which is no analogy at all, he sug-
gests that the agent by which man was upraised
into a kingdom apart bears like relation to natural
selection as the glacial epoch bears to the ordinary
agents of denudation and other changes in producing
new effects which, though continuous with preceding
effects, were not due to the same causes.

Applying this " argument " (drawn from natural
causes), as Mr. Wallace names it, " to the case of
man's intellectual and moral nature," he contends
that such special faculties as the mathematical,
musical, and artistic (is this faculty to be denied the
nest-decorating bower bird?), and the high moral
qualities which have given the martyr his constancy,
the patriot his devotion, and the philanthropist his
unselfishness, are due to a " spiritual essence or na-

MODERN EVOLUTION,

237

ture, superadded to the animal nature of man." We
are not told at what stage in man's development this
was inserted; whether, once and for all, in "primi-
tive " man, with potentiality of transmission through
Palaeolithic folk to all succeeding generations; or
whether there is special infusion of a " spiritual es-
sence " into every human being at birth.

Any perplexity that might arise at the line thus
taken by Mr. Wallace vanishes before the fact, al-
ready enlarged upon, that the author of the Malay
Archipelago and Island Life has written a book on
Miracles and Modern Spiritualism in defence of both.
The explanation lies in that duality of mind which,
in one compartment, ranks Mr. Wallace foremost
among naturalists, and, in the other compartment,
places him among the most credulous of Spiritualists.

Despite this, Mr. Wallace has claims to a respect-
ful hearing and to serious reply. Fortunately, he
would appear to furnish the refutation to his own
argument in the following paragraph from his de-
lightful Contributions to the Theory of Natural Se-
lection :

" From the time when the social and sympathetic
feelings came into operation and the intellectual and
moral faculties became fairly developed, man would
cease to be influenced by natural selection in his
physical form and structure. As an animal he would
remain almost stationary, the changes in the sur-
rounding universe ceasing to produce in him that
powerful modifying efifect which they exercise on

238 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

other parts of the organic world. But, from the
moment that the form of his body became stationary,
his mind would become subject to those very influ-
ences from which his body had escaped; every slight
variation in his mental and moral nature which
should enable him better to guard against adverse
circumstances and combine for mutual comfort and
protection would be preserved and accumulated; the
better and higher specimens of our race would there-
fore increase and spread, the lower and more brutal
would give way and successively die out, and that
rapid advancement of mental organisation would
occur which has raised the very lowest races of man
so far above the brutes (although differing so little
from some of them in physical structure), and, in con-
junction with scarcely perceptible modifications of
form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the
European races " (pp. 316, 317, Second Edition,

1871).

This argument has suggestive illustration in the
fifth chapter of the Origin of Species. Mr. Darwin
there refers to a remark to the following effect made
by Mr. Waterhouse: " A part developed in any species'
in an extraordinary degree or manner in comparison
with the same part in allied species tends to be highly
variable." This applies only where there is unusual
development. " Thus, the wing of a bat is a most
abnormal structure in the class of mammals; but
the rule would not apply here, because the whole
group of bats possesses wings; it would apply only

MODERN EVOLUTION.

239

if some one species had wings developed in a re-
markable manner in comparison with the other spe-
cies of the same genius." And when this exceptional
development of any part or organ occurs, we may
conclude that the modification has arisen since the
period when the several species branched off from
the common progenitor of the genus ; and this period
will seldom be very remote, as species rarely endure
for more than one geological period.

How completely this applies to man, the latest
product of organic evolution. The brain is that part
or organ in him which has been developed " in an
extraordinary degree, in comparison with the same
part " in other Primates, and which has become
highly variable. Whatever may have been the favour-
ing causes which secured his immediate progenitors
such modification of brain as advanced him in intel-
ligence over " allied species," the fact abides that
in this lies the explanation of their after-history; the
arrest of the one, the unlimited progress of the
other. Increasing intelligence at work through vast
periods of time originated and developed those social
conditions which alone made possible that progress
which, in its most advanced degree, but a small
proportion of the race has reached. For in this ques-
tion of mental differences the contrast is not be-
tween man and ape, but between man savage and
civilized; between the incapacity of the one to count
beyond his fingers, and the capacity of the other to
calculate an eclipse of the sun or a transit of Venus.

240

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

It would therefore seem that Mr. Wallace should
introduce his " spiritual essence, or nature," in the
intermediate, and not in the initial stage.

As answer to Mr. Wallace's argument that in
their large and well-developed brains, savages '' pos-
sess an organ quite disproportioned to their require-
ments," Huxley cites Wallace's own remarks in his
paper on Instinct in Man and Animals as to the
considerable demands made by the needs of the lower
races on their observing faculties which call into
play no mean exercise of brain function.

" Add to this," Huxley says, " the knowledge
which a savage is obliged to gain of the properties
of plants, of the characters and habits of animals,
and of the minute indications by which their course
is discoverable; consider that even an Australian
can make excellent baskets and nets, and neatly
fitted and beautifully balanced spears; that he learns
to use these so as to be able to transfix a quartern
loaf at sixty yards; and that very often, as in the
case of the American Indians, the language of a
savage exhibits complexities which a well-trained
European finds it difficult to master; consider that
every time a savage tracks his game, he employs a
minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of induc-
tive and deductive reasoning which, applied to other
matters, would assure some reputation, and I think
one need ask no further why he possesses such a
fair supply of brains.". . . But Mr. Wallace's objec-
tion " applies quite as strongly to the lower animals.

MODERN EVOLUTION.

241

Surely a wolf must have too much brain, or else
how is it that a dog, with only the same quantity
and form of brain, is able to develop such singular
intelligence? The wolf stands to the dog in the
same relation as the savage to the man; and there-
fore, if Mr. Wallace's doctrine holds good, a higher
power must have superintended the breeding up of
wolves from some inferior stock, in order to prepare
them to become dogs " (Critiques and Addresses,

P- 293)-

After all is said, perhaps the effective refutation
of the belief in a spiritual entity superadded in man
is found in the explanation of the origin of that belief
which anthropology supplies.

The theory of the origin and growth of the belief
in souls and spiritual beings generally, and in a
future life, which has been put into coherent form
by Spencer and Tylor, is based upon an enormous
mass of evidence gathered by travellers among ex-
isting barbaric peoples; evidence agreeing in char-
acter with that which results from investigations
into beliefs of past races in varying stages of culture.
Only brief reference to it here is necessary, but the
merest outline suffices to show from what obvious
phenomena the conception of a soul was derived, a
conception of which all subsequent forms are but
elaborated copies. As in other matters, crude analo-
gies have guided the barbaric mind in its ideas about
spirits and their behaviour. A man falls asleep and
dreams certain things; on waking, he believes that

242 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

these things actually happened; and he therefore
concludes that the dead who came to him or to
whom he went in his dreams, are alive; that the
friend or foe whom he knows to be far away, but
with whom he feasted or fought in dreamland, came
to him. He sees another man fall into a swoon or
trance that may lay him seemingly lifeless for hours
or even days; he himself may be attacked by de-
ranging fevers and see visions stranger than those
which a healthy person sees; shadows of himself and
of objects, both living and not living, follow or pre-
cede him and lengthen or shorten in the withdrawing
or advancing light; the still water throws back im-
ages of himself; the hillsides resound with mocking
echoes of his words and of sounds around him; and
it is these and allied phenomena which have given
rise to the notion of " another self," to use Mr. Spen-
cer's convenient term, or of a number of selves that
are sometimes outside the man and sometimes inside
him, as to which the barbaric mind is never sure.
Outside him, however, when the man is sleeping,
so that he must not be awakened, lest this " other
self " be hindered from returning; or when he is sick,
or in. the toils of the medicine-man, who may hold
the " other self " in his power, as in the curious soul-
trap of the Polynesians — a series of cocoa-nut rings
— in which the sorcerer makes believe to catch and
detain the soul of an ofifender or sick person. When
Dr. Catat and his companions, MM. Maistre and
Foucart were exploring the " Bara " country on the

MODERN EVOLUTION. 243

west coast of Madagascar the people suddenly be-
came hostile. On the previous day the travellers,
not without difficulty, had photographed the royal
family, and now found themselves accused of taking
the souls of the natives with the object of selling
them when they returned to France. Denial was
of no avail; following the custom of the Malagasays,
they were compelled to catch the souls, which were
then put into a casket, and ordered by Dr. Catat
to return to their respective owners (Times, 24th
March, 1891).

Although the difference presented by such phe-
nomena and by death is that it is abiding, while they
are temporary, to the barbaric mind the difference is
in degree, and not in kind. True, the " other self "
has left the body, and will never return to it; but it
exists, for it appears in dreams and hallucinations,
and therefore is believed to revisit its ancient haunts,
as well as to tarry often near the exposed or buried
body. The nebulous theories which identified the
soul with breath, and shadow, and reflection, slowly
condensed into theories of semi-substantiality still
charged with ethereal conceptions, resulting in the
curious amalgam which, in the minds of cultivated
persons, whenever they strive to envisage the idea,
represents the disembodied soul.

Therefore, in vain may we seek for points of dif-
ference in our comparison of primitive ideas of the
origin and nature of the soul with the later ideas.
The copious literature to which these have given

244 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

birth is represented in the bibHography appended to
Mr. Alger's work on Theories of a Future Life, by
4977 books, exclusive of many pubHshed since his
list was compiled. Save in refinement of detail such
as a higher culture secures, what is there to choose
between the four souls of the Hidatsa Indians, the
two souls of the Gold Coast natives, and the tripartite
division of man by Rabbis, Platonists, and Paulinists,
which are but the savage other-self "writ large"?
Their common source is in man's general animistic
interpretation of Nature, which is a vera causa, super-
seding the need for the assumptions of which Mr.
Wallace's is a type. As an excellent illustration of
what is meant by animism, we may cite what Mr.
Everard im Thurn has to say about the Indians of
Guiana, who are, presumably, a good many steps
removed from so-called " primitive " man. '' The
Indian does not see any sharp line of distinction
such as we see between man and other animals, be-
tween one kind of animal and another, or between
animals — man included — and inanimate objects. On
the contrary, to the Indian all objects, animate and
inanimate, seem exactly of the same nature, except
that they differ in the accident of bodily form. Every
object in the whole world is a being, consisting of
a body and spirit, and differs from every other ob-
ject in no respect except that of bodily form, and in
the greater or lesser degree of brute power and brute
cunning consequent on the difference of bodily form
and bodily habits. Our next step, therefore, is to

MODERN EVOLUTION, 245

note that animals, other than men, and even inani-
mate objects, have spirits which differ not at all in
kind from those of men."

The importance of the evidence gathered by an-
thropology in support of man's inclusion in the gen-
eral theory of evolution is ever becoming more mani-
fest. For it has brought witness to continuity in or-
ganic development at the point where a break has
been assumed, and driven home the fact that if
Evolution operates anywhere, it operates everywhere.
And operates, too, in such a way that every part co-
operates in the discharge of a universal process.
Hence it meets the divisions which mark opposition
to it by the transcendent power of unity.

Until the past half-century, man excepted him-
self, save in crude and superficial fashion, from that
investigation which, for long periods, he has made
into the earth beneath him and the heavens above
him. This tardy inquiry into the history of his own
kind, and its place in the order and succession of life,
as well as its relation to the lower animals, between
whom and itself, as has been shown, the barbaric
mind sees much in common, is due, so far as Chris-
tendom is concerned (and the like cause applies,
mutatis mutandis, in non-Christian civilized communi-
ties), to the subjection of the intellect to pre-con-
ceived theories based on the authority accorded to
ancient legends about man. These legends, invested
with the sanctity with which time endows the past,
finally became integral parts of sacred literatures, to

246 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

question which was as superfluous as it was impious.
Thus it has come to pass that the only being com-
petent to inquire into his own antecedents has looked
at his htstory through the distorting prism of a
mythopoeic past!

Perhaps, in the long run, the gain has exceeded
the loss. For, in the precedence of study of other
sciences more remote from man's " business and
bosom," there has been rendered possible a more
dispassionate treatment of matters charged with pro-
founder issues. Since the Church, however she may
conveniently ignore the fact as concession after con-
cession is wrung from her, has never slackened in
jealousy of the advance of secular knowledge, it was
well for human progress that those subjects of in-
quiry which affected orthodox views only indirectly
were first prosecuted. The brilliant discoveries in
astronomy, to which the Copernican theory gave im-
petus, although they displaced the earth from its
assumed supremacy among the bodies in space, did
not apparently affect the doctrine of the supremacy
of man as the centre of Divine intervention, as the
creature for whom the great scheme of redemption
had been formulated " in the counsels of the Trinity,"
and the tragedy of the self-sacrifice of God the Son
enacted on earth. The surrender or negation of any
fundamental dogma of Christian theology was not
involved in the abandonment of the statement in
the Bible as to the dominant position of the earth
in relation to the sun and other self-luminous stars.

MODERN EVOLUTION.

247

To our own time the increase of knowledge con-
cerning the myriads of sidereal systems which re-
volve through space is not held to be destructive
of those dogmas, but held, rather, to supply material
for speculation as to the probable extension of Di-
vine paternal government throughout the universe.
And, although, as coming nearer home, with conse-
quent greater chance of intrusion of elements of
friction, the like applies to the discoveries of geology.
Apart from intellectual apathy, which explains much,
the impact of these discoveries on traditional beliefs
was softened by the buffers which a moderating
spirit of criticism interposed in the shape of super-
ficial " reconciliations " emptying the old cosmogony
of all its poetry, and therefore of its value as a key
to primitive ideas, and converting it into bastard
science. Thus a temporary, because artificial, unity,
was set up. But with the evidence supplied by
study of the ancient life whose remains are imbedded
in the fossil-yielding strata, that unity is shivered.
In a Scripture that " cannot be broken " there was
read the story of conflict and death aeons before man
appeared. Between this record, and that which
spoke of pain and death as the consequences of
man's disobedience to the frivolous prohibition of
an anthropomorphic God, there is no possible recon-
ciliation.

To the evidence from fossiliferous beds was
added evidence from old river-gravels and limestone
caverns. The relics extracted from the stalagmitic

248 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

deposits in Kent's Hole, near Torquay, had lain un-
heeded for some years save as " curios," when M.
Boucher des Perthes saw in the worked flints of a
somewhat rougher type which he found mingled with
the bones of rhinoceroses, cave-bears, mammoths, or
woolly-haired elephants, and other mammals in the
'' drift " or gravel-pits of Abbeville, in Picardy, the
proofs of man's primitive savagery, so far as Western
Europe was concerned. The presence of these
rudely-chipped flints had been noticed by M. de
Perthes in 1839, but he could not persuade savants
to admit that human hands had shaped them, until
these doubting Thomases saw for themselves like
implements in situ at a depth of seventeen feet from
the original surface of the ground. That was in
1858: a year before the publication of the Origin of
Species. Similar materials have been unearthed
from every part of the globe habitable once or in-
habited now. They confirm the speculations of Lu-
cretius as to a universal makeshift with stone, bone,
horn, and such-like accessible or pliable substances
during the ages that preceded the discovery of
metals. Therefore, the existence of a Stone Age at
one period or another where now an Age of Iron
(following an Age of Bronze) prevails, is an estab-
lished canon of archaeological science. From this
follows the inference that man's primitive condition
was that which corresponds to the lowest type ex-
tant, the Australian and Papuan; that the further
back inquiry is pushed such culture as exists is found

MODERN EVOLUTION.

249

to have been preceded by barbarism; and that the
savage races of to-day represent not a degradation to
which man, as the resuU of a fall from primeval purity
and Eden-like ease, has sunk, but a condition out of
which all races above the savage have emerged.

While Prehistoric Archseology, with its enormous
mass of material remains gathered from " dens and
caves of the earth," from primitive work-shops, from
rude tombs and temples, thus adds its testimony to
the " great cloud of witnesses " ; immaterial remains,
potent as embodying the thought of man, are brought
by the twin sciences of Comparative Mythology and
Folklore, and Comparative Theology — remains of
paramount value, because existing to this day in
hitherto unsuspected form, as survivals in beliefs and
rites and customs. Readers of Tylor's Primitive
Culture, with its wealth of facts and their signifi-
cance; and of Lyall's Asiatic Studies, wherein is de-
scribed the making of myths to this day in the heart
of India; need not be told how the slow zigzag ad-
vance of man in material things has its parallel in
the stages of his intellectual and spiritual advance
all the world over; from the lower animism to the
higher conception of deity ; from bewildering guesses
to assuring certainties. To this mode of progress
no civilized people has been the exception, as notably
in the case of the Hebrews, was once thought — " the
correspondence between the old Israelitic and other
archaic forms of theology extending to details."

While, therefore, the discoveries of astronomers
17

250

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

and geologists have been disintegrating agencies
upon old beliefs, the discoveries classed under the
general term Anthropological are acting as more
powerful solvents on every opinion of the past.
Showing on what mythical foundation the story of
the fall of man rests, Anthropology has utterly de-
molished the raison d'etre of the doctrine of his re-
demption— the keystone of the fabric. It has pene-
trated the mists of antiquity, and traced the myth of
a forfeited Paradise, of the Creation, the Deluge, and
other legends, to their birthplaces in the valley of
the Euphrates or the uplands of Persia; legends
whose earliest inscribed records are on Accadian
tablets, or in the scriptures of Zarathustra. It has
in the spirit of the commended Bereans, " searched "
those and other scriptures, finding therein legends
of founders of ancient faiths cognate to those which
in the course of the centuries gathered round Jesus
of Nazareth; it has collated the rites and ceremonies
of many a barbaric theology with those of old-world
religions — Brahmanic, Buddhistic, Christian — and
found only such differences between them as are
referable to the higher or the lower culture. For
the history of superstitions is included in the history
of beUefs ; the superstitions being the germ-plasm of
which all beliefs above the lowest are the modified
products. Belief incarnates itself in word or act. In
the one we have the charm, the invocation, and the
dogma; in the other the ritual and ceremony. "A
ritual system," Professor Robertson Smith remarks,

MODERN EVOLUTION.

251

" must always remain materialistic, even if its mate-
rialism is disguised under the cloak of mysticism."
And it is with the incarnated ideas, uninfluenced by
the particular creed in connection with which it finds
them, that anthropology deals. Its method is that of
biology. Without bias, without assumptions of rela-
tive truth or falsity, the anthropologist searches into
origins, traces variations, compares and classifies,
and relates the several families to one ordinal group.
He must be what was said of Dante, " a theologian
to whom no dogma is foreign." Unfortunately, this
method, whose application to the physical sciences
is unchallenged, is, when applied to beliefs, regarded
as one of attack, instead of being one of explanation.
But this should not deter; and if in analyzing a be-
lief we kill a superstition, this does but show what
mortality lay at its core. For error cannot survive
dissection. Moreover, as John Morley puts it, " to
tamper with veracity is to tamper with the vital
force of human progress." Therefore, delivering im-
partial judgment, the verdict of anthropology upon
the whole matter is that the claims of Christian
theologians to a special and divine origin of their
religion are refuted by the accordant evidence of the
latest utterances of a science whose main concern is
with the origin, nature, and destiny of man.

The extension of the comparative method to the
various products of man's intellectual and spiritual
nature is the logical sequence to the adoption of that
method throughout every department of the uni-

252

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

verse. Of course it starts with the assumption of dif-
ferences in things, else it would be superfluous. But
it equally starts with the assumption of resemblances,
and in every case it has brought out the fact that
the differences are superficial, and that the resem-
blances are fundamental.

All this bears closely on Huxley's work. The
impulse thereto has come largely from the evidence
focussed in Man's Place in Nature, evidence of which
the material of the writings of his later years is the
expansion. The cultivation of intellect and character
had always been a favourite theme with him, and
the interest was widened when the passing of Mr.
Forster's Elementary Education Act in 1870 brought
the problem of popular culture to the front. The
wave of enthusiasm carried a group of distinguished
liberal candidates to the polls, and Huxley was
elected a member of the School Board for London.
Then, although in not so acute a form as now, the
religious difficulty was the sole cause of any serious
division, and Huxley's attitude therein puzzled a
good many people because he advocated the reten-
tion of the Bible in the schools. Those who should
have known him better thought that he was (to
quote from one of his letters to the writer) " a hypo-
crite, or simply a fool." " But," he adds, " my mean-
ing was that the mass of the people should not be
deprived of the one great literature which is open
to them, nor shut out from the perception of its
place in the whole past history of civiHsed mankind."

MODERN EVOLUTION.

253

He lamented, as every thoughtful person must la-
ment, the decay of Bible reading in this generation,
while, at the same time, he advocated the more
strenuously its detachment from the glosses and
theological inferences which do irreparable injury
to a literature whose value .cannot be overrated.

For Huxley was well read in history, and there-
fore he would not trust the clergy as interpreters of
the Bible. After repeating in the Prologue to his
Essays on Controverted Questions what he had said
about the book in his article on the School Boards
in Critiques and Addresses, he adds, ** I laid stress
on the necessity of placing such instruction in lay
hands; in the hope and belief that it would thus
gradually accommodate itself to the coming changes
of opinion; that the theology and the legend would
drop more and more out of sight, while the peren-
nially interesting historical, literary, and ethical con-
tents would come more and more into view."

Subsequent events have justified neither the hope
nor the belief. Had Huxley lived to see that all
the sectaries, while quarrelling as to the particular
dogmas which may be deduced from the Bible, agree
in refusing to use it other than as an instrument for
the teaching of dogma, he would probably have come
to see that the only solution in the interests of the
young, is its exclusion from the schools. Never
has any collection of writings, whose miscellaneous,
unequal, and often disconnected character is obscured
by the common title '' Bible " which covers them,

254

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

had such need for dehverance from the so-called
*' believers " in it. Its value is only to be realized in
the degree that theories of its inspiration are aban-
doned. Then only is it possible to treat it like any
other literature of the kind; to discriminate between
the coarse and barbaric features which evidence the
humanness of its origin, and the loftier features of
its later portions which also evidence how it falls into
line with other witnesses of man's gradual ethical
and spiritual development.

Huxley's breadth of view, his sympathy with
every branch of culture, his advocacy of literary in
unison with scientific training, fitted him supremely
for the work of the School Board, but its demands
were too severe on a man never physically strong,
and he was forced to resign. However, he was
thereby set free for other work, which could be only
effectively done by exchanging the arena for the
study. The earliest important outcome of that re-
lief was the monograph on Hume, published in 1879,
and the latest was the Romanes lecture on Evolu-
tion and Ethics, which was delivered in the Shel-
donian Theatre at Oxford on the i8th of May, 1893.
Between the two lie a valuable series of papers deal-
ing with the Evolution of Theology and cognate sub-
jects. In all these we have the application of the
theory of Evolution to the explanation of the origin
of beliefs and of the basis of morals. To quote the
saying attributed to Liebnitz, both Spencer and
Huxley, and all who follow them, care for '' science

MODERN EVOLUTION.

2S5

only because it enables them to speak with authority
in philosophy and religion." In a letter to the writer,
wherein Huxley refers to his retirement from official
life, he says: —

I was so ill that I thought with Hamlet, " the rest is silence."
But my wiry constitution has unexpectedly weathered the storm,
and I have every reason to believe that with renunciation of the
devil and all his works (i. e., public speaking, dining, and be-
ing dined, etc.) my faculties may be unimpaired for a good
spell yet, And whether my lease is long or short, I mean to
devote them to the work I began in the paper on the Evolu-
tion of Theology.

That essay was first published in two sections in
the Nineteenth Century, 1886, and was the sequel
to the eighth chapter of his Hume. The Romanes
Lecture supplemented the last chapter of that book.
All these are accessible enough to render superfluous
any abstract of their contents. But the tribute due
to David Hume, who may well-nigh claim place
among the few but fit company of Pioneers, war-
rants reference to his anticipation of accepted theo-
ries of the origin of belief in spiritual beings in his
Natural History of Religion, published in 1757. He
says : " There is an universal tendency among man-
kind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to
transfer to every object those qualities with which
they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they
are intimately conscious. . . . The unknown causes
which continually employ their thought, appearing
always in the same aspect, are all apprehended to
be of the same kind or species. Nor is it long be-

256 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

fore we ascribe to them thought, and reason, and
passion, and sometimes even the Hmbs and figures
of men, in order to bring them nearer to a resem-
blance with ourselves." In his address to the Sor-
bonne on The Successive Advances of the Human
Mind, delivered in 1750, Turgot expresses the same
idea, touching, as John Morley says in his essay on
that statesman, " the root of most of the wrong
thinking that has been as a manacle to science."

The foregoing, and passages of a like order, are
made by Huxley the text of his elaborations of the
several stages of theological evolution, the one note
of all of which is the continuity of belief in super-
natural intervention. But more important than the
decay of that belief which is the prelude to decay of
belief in deity itself as commonly defined, is the
resulting transfer of the foundation of morals, in
other words, of motives to conduct, from a theo-
logical to a social base. Theology is not morality;
indeed, it is, too often, immorality. It is concerned
with man's relations to the gods in whom he believes ;
>.\ while morals are concerned with man's relations to
his fellows. The one looks heavenward, wondering
what dues shall be paid the gods to win their smiles
or ward off their frowns. In old Rome sanctitas or
holiness, was, according to Cicero, " the knowledge
of the rites which had to be performed." These done,
the gods were expected to do their part. So in new
Rome, when the Catholic has attended mass, his
share in the contract is ended. Worship and sacri-

MODERN EVOLUTION. 257

fice, as mere acts toward supernatural beings, may
be consonant with any number of lapses in conduct.
Morality, on the other hand, looks earthward, and
is prompted to action solely by what is due from a
man to his fellow-men, or from his fellow-men to
him. Its foundation therefore is not in supernatural
beHefs, but in social instincts. All sin is thus resolved
into an anti-social act: a wrong done by man to
man.

This is not merely readjustment; it is revolution.
For it is the rejection of theology with its appeals
to human obligation to deity, and to man's hopes of
future reward or fears of future punishment; and it
is the acceptance of wholly secular motives as in-
centives to right action. Those motives, having
their foundation in the physical, mental, and moral
results of our deeds, rest on a stable basis. No
longer interlaced with the unstable theological, they
neither abide nor perish with it. And one redeem-
ing feature of our time is that the churches are be-
ginning to see this, and to be effected by it. John
Morley caustically remarks that " the efforts of the
heterodox have taught them to be better Christians
than they were a hundred years ago." Certain ex-
tremists excepted, they are keeping dogma in the
background, and are laying stress on the socialism
which it is contended was at the heart of the teach-
ing of Jesus. Wisely, if not very consistently, they
are seeking alliance with the liberal movements
whose aim is the " abolition of privilege." The lib-

258 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

eral theologians, in the face of the varying ethical
standards which mark the Old Testament and the
New, no longer insist on the absoluteness of moral
codes, and so fall into line with the evolutionist in
his theory of their relativeness. For society in its
advance from lower to higher conceptions of duty,
completely reverses its ethics, looking back with
horror on that which was once permitted and un-
questioned.

It is with this checking of '* the ape and tiger,"
and this fostering of the '' angel " in man, that Hux-
ley dealt in his Romanes Lecture. There was much
unintelligent, and some wilful, misunderstanding of
his argument, else a prominent Catholic biologist
would hardly have welcomed it as a possible prelude
to Huxley's submission to the Church. Yet the
reasoning was clear enough, and in no wise contra-
vened the application of Evolution to morals. Hux-
ley showed that Evolution is both cosmical and ethical.
Cosmic Evolution has resulted in the universe with
its non-living and living contents, and since, deal-
ing with the conditions which obtain on our planet,
there is not sufficient elbow-room or food for all the
offspring of living things, the result is a furious
struggle in which the strong win and transmit their
advantages to their descendants. Nature is wholly
selfish; the race is to the swift, and the battle to the
strong.

But there are limits set to that struggle by man
in the substitution, also within limits, of social prog-

MODERN EVOLUTION.

259

ress for cosmic progress. In this Ethical Evolution
selfishness is so far checked as to permit groups of
human beings to Hve together in amity, recognis-
ing certain common rights, which restrain the self-
regarding impulses. For, in the words of Marcus
Aurelius, " that which is not good for the swarm
is not good for the bee " (Med., vi, 54). Huxley
aptly likens this counter-process to the action of
a gardener in dealing with a piece of waste ground.
He stamps out the weeds, and plants fragrant flowers
and useful fruits. But he must not relax his efforts,
otherwise the weeds will return, and the untended
plants will be choked and perish. So in conduct.
For the common weal, in which the unit shares,
thus blending the selfish and the unselfish motives,
men check their natural impulses. The emotions and
affections which they share with the lower social
animals, only in higher degree, are co-operative, and
largely help the development of family, tribal, and
national life. But once let these )^e weakened, and
society becomes a bear-garden. Force being the
dominant factor in life, the struggle for existence
revives in all its primitive violence, and atavism as-
serts its power. Therefore, although he do the best
that in him lies, man can only set limits to that strug-
gle, for the ethical process is an integral part of the
cosmic powers, " just as the ' governor ' in a steam-
engine is part of the mechanism of the engine."
As with society, so with its units: there is no truce
in the contest. Dr. Plimmer, an eminent bacteriolo-

/

26o PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

gist, describes to the writer the action of a kind of
yeast upon a species of Daphnia, or water-flea.
Metschnikoff observed that these yeast-cells, which
enter with the animal's food, penetrate the intestines,
and get into the tissues. They are there seized upon
by the leukocytes, which gather round the invaders
in larger fashion, as if seemingly endowed with con-
sciousness, so marvellous is the strategy. If they
win, the Daphnia recovers; if they lose, it dies. '' In
a similar manner in ourselves certain leukocytes
(phagocytes) accumulate at any point of invasion,
and pick up the living bacteria," and in the success
or failure of their attack lies the fate of man. Which
things are fact as well as allegory; and time is on
the side of the bacteria. For as our life is but a tem-
porary arrest of the universal movement toward dis-
solution, so naught in our actions can arrest the
destiny of our kind. Huxley thus puts it in the con-
cluding sentences of his Preface — written in July,
1894, one year before his death — to the reissue of
Evolution and Ethics:

" That man, as a ' political animal,' is susceptible
of a vast amount of improvement, by education, by
instruction, and by the application of his intelligence
to the adaptation of the conditions of life to his
higher needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt.
But, so long as he remains liable to error, intellectual
or moral; so long as he is compelled to be perpet-
ually on guard against the cosmic forces, whose ends
are not his ends, without and within himself; so

MODERN E VOL UTION, 26 1

long as he is haunted by inexpugnable memories
and hopeless aspirations; so long as the recognition
of his intellectual limitations forces him to acknowl-
edge his incapacity to penetrate the mystery of ex-
istence; the prospect of attaining untroubled happi-
ness, or of a state which can, even remotely, deserve
the title of perfection, appears to me to be as mis-
leading an illusion as ever was dangled before the
eyes of poor humanity. And there have been many
of them. That which lies before the human race
is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in
opposition to the State of Nature, the State of Art
of an organised polity; in which, and by which, man
may develop a worthy civilisation, capable of main-
taining and constantly improving itself, until the
evolution of our globe shall have entered so far upon
its downward course that the cosmic process resumes
its sway; and, once more, the State of Nature pre-
vails over the surface of our planet."

But only those of low ideals would seek in this
impermanence of things excuse for inaction; or
worse, for self-indulgence. The world will last a
very long time yet, and afford scope for battle against
the wrongs done by man to man. Even were it and
ourselves to perish to-morrow, our duty is clear while
the chance of doing it may be ours. Clifford, — dead
before his prime, before the rich promise of his
genius had its full fruitage, — speaking of the inevita-
ble end of the earth " and all the consciousness of
men " reminds us, in his essay on The First and

262 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Last Catastrophe, that we are helped in facing the
fact "by the words of Spinoza: 'The free man
thinks of nothing so Httle as of death, and his wis-
dom is a meditation not of death but of Hfe/ " " Our
interest," QifTord adds, *' hes with so much of the
past as may serve to guide our actions in the present,
and to intensify our pious allegiance to the fathers
who have gone before us and the brethren who are
with us; and our interest lies with so much of the
future as we may hope will be appreciably afifected
by our good actions now. Do I seem to say, ' Let
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?' Far -from
it; on the contrary I say, ' Let us take hands and
help, for this day we are alive together.' "

Evolution and Ethics was Huxley's last impor-
tant deliverance, since the completion of his reply to
Mr. Balfour's " quaintly entitled " Foundations of
Belief was arrested by his death on the 30th of June,

1895.

In looking through the Collected Essays, which
represent his non-technical contributions to knowl-
edge, there may be regret that throughout his life
circumstances were against his doing any piece of
long-sustained work, such as that which, for exam-
ple, the affluence and patience of Darwin permitted
him to do. But until Huxley's later years, and, in-
deed, through broken health to the end, his work
outside official demands had to be done fitfully and
piecemeal, or not at all. Notwithstanding this, it has
the unity which is inspired by a central idea. The

MODERN EVOLUTION. 263

application of the theory of evolution all round im-
parts a quality of relation to subjects seemingly di-
verse. And this comes out clearly and strongly in
the more orderly arrangement of the material in the
new issue of Collected Essays.

These show what an omnivorous reader he was;
how well equipped in classics, theology, and general
literature, in addition to subjects distinctly his own.
He sympathized with every branch of culture. As
contrasted with physical science, he said, " Nothing
would grieve me more than to see literary training
other than a very prominent branch of education."
One corner of his library was filled with a strange
company of antiquated books of orthodox type; this
he called " the condemned cell." When looking at
the " strange bedfellows " that slept on the shelves,
the writer asked Huxley what author had most in-
fluenced a style whose clearness and vigour, never-
theless, seems unborrowed; and he at once named
the masculine and pelluccid Leviathan of Hobbes. He
had the happy faculty of rapidly assimilating what he
read; of clearly grasping an opponent's standpoint;
and what is a man's salvation nowadays, freedom
from that curse of specialism which kills all sense of
proportion, and reduces its slave to the level of the
machine-hand that spends his life in making the
heads of screws. He believed in " scepticism as the
highest duty, and in blind faith as the one unpardon-
able sin." " And," he adds, '' it cannot be otherwise,
for every great advance in natural knowledge has

264 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION,

involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cher-
ishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of
the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary
of science holds his firmest convictions, not because
the men he most venerates holds them; not because
their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but
because his experience teaches him that whenever
he chooses to bring these convictions into contact
with their primary source. Nature — ^whenever he
thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment
and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The
man of science has learned to believe in justification,
not by faith, but by verification." Therefore he
nursed no illusions; would not say that he knew
when he did not or could not know, and bidding us
follow the evidence whithersoever it leads us, re-
mains the surest-footed guide of our time. Such
leadership is his, since he has gone on "from strength
to strength." The changes in the attitude of man
toward momentous questions which new evidence
and the zeit-geist have effected, have been approaches
to the position taken by Huxley since he first caught
the pubHc ear. His deep religious feeling kept him
in sympathetic touch with his fellows. Ever present
to him was " that consciousness of the limitation of
man, that sense of an open secret which he cannot
penetrate, in which lies the essence of all religion."
In one of his replies to a prominent exponent of
the Comtian philosophy, that " incongruous mixture
of bad science with eviscerated papistry," as he calls

MODERN EVOLUTION. 265

it, Huxley protests against the idea that the teaching
of science is wholly negative.

I venture, he says, to count it an improbable suggestion
that any one who has graduated in all the faculties of human
relationships ; who has taken his share in all the deep joys
and deeper anxieties which cling about them, who has felt the
burden of young lives entrusted to his care, and has stood
alone with his dead before the abyss of the Eternal — has never
had a thought beyond negative criticism.

That is the Agnostic position as he defined it;
an attitude, not a creed; and if he refused to affirm,
he equally refused to deny.

Thus have the Pioneers of Evolution, clear-
sighted and sure-footed, led us by ways undreamed-
of at the start to a goal imdreamed-of by the earliest
among them. To have halted on the route when the
graver difficulties of the road began would have made
the journey futile, and have left their followers in
the wilds. Evolution, applied to everything up to
man, but stopping at the stage when he appears,
would have remained a fascinating study, but would
not have become a guiding philosophy of life. It
is in the extension of its processes as explanation of
all that appertains to mankind that its abiding value
consists. That extension was inevitable. The old
theologies of civilized races, useful in their day, be-
cause answering, however imperfectly, to permanent
needs of human nature, no longer sufBce. Their
dogmas are traced as the lineal descendants of bar-
baric conceptions; their rittial is becoming an archse-

266 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

ologlcal curiosity. They have no answer to the
questions propounded by the growing intelligence of
our time; neither can they satisfy the emotions
which they but feebly discipline. Their place is
being slowly, but surely, and more effectively, filled
by a theory which, interpreting the " mighty sum of
things," substitutes clear conceptions of unbroken
order and relation between phenomena, in place of
hazy conceptions of intermittent interferences; a
theory which gives more than it takes away. For
if men are deprived of belief in the pseudo-mysteries
coined in a pre-scientific age, their wonder is fed,
and their inquiry is stimulated, by the consciousness
of the impenetrable mysteries of the Universe.

INDEX.

Abdera, i6.

Abiogenesis, 216.

Abraham, 54.

Adam, fall of, 104 ; stature of, 107.

Advent, the Second, 50, 70.

-^gean, the, 3.

Agassiz, 162.

Agrigentum, 13.

Air as primary substance, 13.

Alexander the Great, 17.

Alexandria, conquest of, 77 ; phil-
osophical schools of, 77.

Allegorical method, 75.

Allen, Grant, 2, 113, 167.

Amazons, river, 136.

America, discovery of, 84.

Amoeba, the, 224.

Anatomy, comparative, 230.

human, 90.

Anaxagoras, 14.

Anaximander, 7, 20.

Ancestor-worship, 70.

Andromeda, nebula in, 178.

Angels, belief in, 69.

Animism, 69, 97, 244, 255.

Anthropology and belief in the
soul, 241.

and dogmas of the Fall and

the Redemption, 247, 250.

and man's place in Evolu-

Antioch, 47.

Ape and man, brain of, 227.

general relation of, 228.

tion, 245.

Aquinas, Thomas, 20, 75.
Arab conquest, 76.
philosophy, 79.

Arch-fiend, 54.

Aristotle, 17-19, 20, 32, 35, 36,

74, 80, 81, 87, 163.
Arnold, Matthew, 13, 213.
Ascent of Man, Drummond's, 2ig.
Asklepios, 29.
Astruc, Dr., 103.
Athens, intellectual decay in, 35,

77.

persecution in, 14.

religious revival in, ii.

Atomic theoiy, 16.

Atonement, doctrine of the, and

Anthropology, 250.
Augurs, 31.

Augustine, St., 20, 55, 74.
Augustus, Caesar, 42, 48.
Aurelius, Marcus, 51, 259.
Averroes, 80.
Avicenna, loi.

Bacon, Lord, 93, 108.
Bacon, Roger, 82.
Bacteria and leukocytes, 260.
Bagehot, Mr., 2.

267

268

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Baghdad, 79.

Balfour, A. J., 262.

Baptism, origin of rite of, 66.

Bates, H. W., 134, 136, 162, 167,
208.

Beagle, voyage of the, 131.

Benn, A. W., 9, 19.

Bible, Dictionary of the, 107.

Biology, advance in study of,
108.

Black magic, 83.

Body and mind, mystery of con-
nection between, 231.

Bone, resurrection, 90.

Bonnet, Charles, 21.

" Boundless," the, 7.

Breathing, symbolism of, 69.

Bruno, Giordano, 8g.

Buddha, 64.

Buffon, place of, in theory of
Evolution, no.

submission to the Sorbonne,

104.

Burnet, Prof., 5, 7, 16.

Burton's Anatomy, 60.

Butcher, Prof., 4.

Caesalpino, 91.

Cairo, 80.

Canon of the Bible, 58, 88.

Carpenter, Dr., 150, 233.

Carthage, 78.

Council of, 58.

Casalis, Mr., i.
Catat Dr., 242.
Celtic religion, 70.
Chaldaea, 4.

Chambers, Robert, 119.
Charles Martel, 78.
Chosroes, 77, 79.

Christianity and Anthropology,

251.

anti-social nature of, 50.

causes of success of, 48, 56.

opposition to inquiry, 40.

origin of, 37.

pagan elements in, 59-73.

philosophic elements in, 57.

polytheism of, 69.

varying fortunes of, 38.

Christians, persecution of, 49.
Church Congress and Evolution,

159, 219.
Circumnavigation of the globe, 85.
Clifford, Prof., 261.
Collings, 41.
Colophon, g.

Columbus, Christopher, 84.
Communion at Ha warden Church,

68.
Comtism, 264.
Conduct, bases of, 186, 254.
Consciousness, evolution of, 187,

224.

self-, 187.

Conservation of energy, 33, 120,

149, 177.

Copernicus, 20, 86.

Cox-dova, 80.

Correlation of forces, 189.

Cosmic Evolution, 258.

Councils, general, 220.

Courthope, W. J., 164.

Creation, days of, 103, 106.

Credulity of the learned, 148.

Creeds, 52, 220.

Criticism of religions, features of

modern, 40.
Cronus, myth of, 56.
Crooke, Mr., 30.

INDEX.

269

Cross, relics of the, 72.
Crown of thorns, 72.
Cuvier, 114, 117, 163.

and Geoffroy St. Hilaire,

214.
Cybele, 29.

Dalton, John, 16, 125.
Daphnia, Dr. Plimmer on, 260.
Darwin, Charles, 126-134, 157-

175.

Life and Letters of, 127, 157.

religious belief of, 173.

Erasmus, 21, iii.

Days of creation, 102, 106.

De Gama, Vasco, 85.

Deluge, 104, 107, 250.

Demeter, 29, 67.

Democritus, 16, 22, 33.

Demons, 55, 75, 87.

De Perthes, Boucher, 120, 248.

De Rerum Natura, 24.

Descartes, 91, 94, 216.

Descent into Hell, 88.

Descent of Man, 167, 172, 218.

Development, law of, 189.

Devil, 54, 83.

De Vinci, Leonardo, 102.

Diagoras, 63.

Dictionary of the Bible, 107.

Dionysus, 67.

Dispersion of the Jews, 56, 77.

Dogma and Evolution, 220.

Driver, Rev. Canon, 53, 107.

Dubois, Dr., 222.

Duner, Professor, 179.

Earth as " element," 13.

Greek notions about the,

6, 8.

Education and dogma, 253.
Egypt, 4, 6, 7.
conquest of, 77.

Eleatic school, 10.
Elviri, Synod of, 62.
Embryology, 118, 218.
Empedocles, 13, 22, 27.
Ephesus, II.
Epictetus, 51.
Epicurus, 22, 27.
Epigenesis, 21.
Ethical Evolution, 259.
Etruscan haruspices, 31.
Eve, stature of, 107.
Evil eye, 69.
Evolution and dogma, 220.

cosmic, 258.

ethical, 258.

inclusion of man in, 245.

inorganic, 175.

organic, 200.

Evolution and Ethics, Huxley on,
219, 254.

Fall, doctrine of the, and anthro-
pology, 247.
Fire, as primary substance, 12.
First Principles, 167, 188.
Fiske, Professor, 8.
Flint implements, 248.
Folk-lore, value of study of, 249.
Fontenelle, 2.
Fossils, theories about, 104.
Frazer, J. G., 66, 220.

Galen, 90.

Galileo, discoveries and persecu-
tion of, 91.
Geology, effect of study of, 100.
revival of study of, 100.

270

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Geology, principles of, 117.

Gesner, gi.

Gibbon, 57, 58, 72, 219.

Gladstone, Mr., 68.

Gnosticism, 48.

Gods in Rome, 29.

Golden Bough, The, 66, 220.

Gospels, origin of, 46.

Gosse, P. H., 104.

Gower, Dr., 155.

Granada, 80.

Greece, 3.

conquest and intellectual de-
cline of, 23.

Greek philosophers, Table of, 36.

Greeks, early conception of earth
by, 6, 8.

search of, for the primary

substance, 6.

Grote, 15.

Haeckel, 115, 164.
Hallucinations, 153.
Haroun al-Raschid, 79.
Hartley, 124.
Haruspices, 31.
Harvey, William, 21, 93.
Hawarden Church, Communion

at, 68.
Heine's Travel-Pictures, 153.
Hellenized Jews, 56, 77.
Helmholtz, 125.
Henrion, 107.
Heraclitus, ii.
Herakles, 29.
Herodotus, 62.

Herschel, Sir William, 95, 177.
Hesiod, 10.

Hippocampus minor, 227.
Hobbes' Leviathan, 60, 263.

Holy Communion, barbaric origin

of rite of, 66, 68.
Homer, 8, 10, 12, 75.
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 141, 162.
Sir William, 119.

Horace, 63, 75.

Huggins, Dr. Wm., 178.

Humanity and Evolution, 192.

Humboldt, 121, 135.

Hume, 97, 192, 216, 255.

Hutton, 115.

Huxley, 94, 157, 159, 201-266.

Indigitamenta, 30.
Inductive philosophy, the, 93.
Inquisition, the, 89, 91.
Instinct, 229.
Ionia, 3, 4, 6, 32.
Isis, 29, 62.

Jerome, St., 24, 105.

Jerusalem, early disciples of Jesus
at, 47.

fall of, 77.

Jesus at, 44.

Jesus, summary of life of, 42-46.

superstition shared by, 53-

56.

Jews, Hellenized, or of the Dis-
persion, 56, 77.

Kant, 94, 175. 200.
Kelvin, Lord, 233.
Kent's Hole, 248.
Khalifs, 76.
Kirchoff, 178.
Kropotkin, Prince, 231.

Lamarck, 114.
Language, 229.

INDEX,

271

La Peyrere, 102.
Laplace, 95, 176.
Leading Men of Science, Table

of, 123-125.
Leibnitz, 124, 254.
Leo IIL, 78.
L'Etui de Nacre, 45.
Leucippus, 16, 23, 33, 36.
Leukocytes, 260.
Life and Letters, Darwin's, 127,

157, 173.
Lightfoot, Dr., 103, 120.
Linnaeus, 108.
Linnean Society, famous meeting

at, 141, 181.
Living and non-living matter,

connection between, 34, 216.
Locke, 94.

Lodge, Prof. Oliver, 147.
Love as an " element," 14.
Lubbock, Sir John, 168.
Lucretius, 17, 23, 24-29, 41,

248.
Luther, 87.

Lyall, Sir Alfred, 30, 38, 249.
Lyell, Sir Charles, 117, 134, 162.

Madonna, 64.

Magellan, 85.

Maine, Sir Henry, 5.

Malay Archipelago, 138.

Malpighi, 2T.

Malthus on Population, iig, 133,

139-
Man and Evolution, 97, 143, 218,

227, 236.

■ and ape, brain of, 227.

— — and ape, general structure

of, 143.
— — antiquity of, 222.

Man, inclusion of, in Evolution,

233.

lower animals and, 218, 227.

primitive state of, 248.

suckling, period of, 8.

Manning, Cardinal, 160.

Man's Place in Nature, 164, 167,

213, 218, 252.
Marcus Aurelius, 51, 259.
Martin, R. B., 169.
Martyr, Peter, 87.
Maskelyne, Mr., 148.
Matter, indestructibility of, 33.
living and non-living, 34,

217.

mystery of, 180, 188, 216,

232.

Matthew, Patrick, 118, 165.

Maudsley, Dr., 156.

Meckel, 118.

Messiah, Jewish belief in, 44, 46.

Metals, age of, 28, 35, 248.

Middleton, Conyers, 60.

Miletus, 6.

Miracles and Modern Spiritual-
ism, 145, 237.

Mithra worship, 42, 50, 71.

Mivart, Prof. St. George, 233.

Mohammed, 76.

Montaigne, 38, 62,

Morality, essential nature of, 256.

Morals and Evolution, 254.

scientific base of, 256.

Morley, John, 39, 170, 251, 257.
Motion, concept of, 178.

indestructibility of, 33.

mystery of, 180, 187, 216,

232.
Mummius, 23.
Munro, Mr., 24.

2/2

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Mysteries, Greek, 49.
Mystery of matter, 231.

motion, 186, 187, 216, 232.

Myth, primitive, features of, 2.

Nebula in Andromeda, 178.
Nebular theory, 94, 180.
Nero, 48.
Nervous system, disorders of the,

153.

origin of the, 225.

New Testament, canon of, 58, 88.

origin of, 51.

Nicene Creed, 52, 220.
Nous of Anaxagoras, 16.
Numbers, in primitive thought, 9.
Pythagorean theory of, 9,

36.

Organic Evolution, 200.

Origin of species, 142, 168, 2ii.

publication of, 157.

reception of, 157, 162.

Osborn, Prof., 102, 119.

Ovid, 219.

Owen, Sir Richard, attitude of,
towards Darwin's theory, 162,
214.

■ review of the Origin of Spe-
cies, 162.

Pagan elements in Christianity)

59-73-
Paladino, Eusapia, 148.
Palaeontology, 218.
Palissy, Bernard, 102.
Pantheon, Roman, 29.
Papacy, origin of the, 58,
Paul, St., 47.
Pausanias, 13.

Pentateuch, 103.

Pericles, 14.

Persia, intellectual activity in, 79.

Perthes, Boucher de, 120, 125,

248.
Petrie, Prof. Flinders, 201.
Philo, 58.
Philosophy, synthetic, 181, 195,

199.
Photography in Science, 178.
Physical Basis of Life, Huxley

on, 215.
Pineal gland, theory of soul in,

91.
Plato, 5, 52, 212.
Polytheism, feature of, 49.
in Christianity, 71.

Pontius Pilate, 44, 48.
Poppaea, Sabina, 48.
Prefonnation theory, 21.
Primary substance, 33.
search after, 6.

Protoplasm, 119.

Psychical Research, Society for,

148.
Psychology, experimental, 230.
Principles of, 187, 189.

Ptolemaic System, 20, 88.
Punch, 206,
Pythagoras, 9.

Pythagorean theoiy of numbers,
9. 36.

Redi, experiments of, 216.
Reformation non-intellectual, 88.
character of the, 86.

Relics, collection of, 71.
worship of, 70.

Revelations, condition of, 223.
Rhys, Professor, 64.

INDEX.

273

Rodd, Rennell, 29.

Roman doctrine of transubstan-

tiation, 67.
Rome, bishop of, 58.

• fire in, 48.

gods in, 29.

polytheism of, 49.

Royal Society, 99.

Sacraments, barbaric origin of,
65-68.

Saints, fictitious, 64.

Salisbury, Lord, Presidential Ad-
dress of, 179, 215.

Samos, 22, 36.

Sanctitas, 256.

Saracens, 78.

Savages, brain of, 240.

Scheiner, Professor, 179,

School Boards, 252.

Schwann, Theodor, 125.

Science, Leading men of, 123-
125.

Second Coming of Jesus, 50, 70.

Sedgwick, 162.

Selden, 47, 220.

Serapis, 71.

Sin, essence of, 257.

Sizzi, 92.

Smith, Professor Robertson, 250.

William (geologist), 118.

Social Statics, 184.

Society, evolution of, 184, 193.

modification of struggle in,

259.
Sociology, Principles of, 186, 199.

study of, 233.

Socrates, 15.

Solar spectrum, lines in, 178.

Sorbonne, the, 104, 256.

Soul, origin of belief in, 241-245.

location of, 91.

Lucretius on location of, 25.

Spain, intellectual advance in, 80.

Spectroscope, the, 178.

Spencer, Herbert, 31, 118, 121,

162, 175-201, 233, 241, 254.
Spinoza, 94.
Spiritualism, 145, 156.
Spontaneous generation, 20, 74.
Sprengel, 119, 125.
St. Hilaire, 107, 114.
Stagira, 17.
Stokes, Sir G. G., 234.
Stone, ages of, 28, 35, 248.
Strabo, loi.

Strife as an " element," 14.
Struggle for life, 131, 140, 258.
Suarez, Francisco, 222.
Synthetic philosophy, 182.

abstract of the, 195, 199.

first draft of, 199.

Table of Greek Philosophers, 36.
of leading men of science,

123-125,

Tacitus, 48.

Thales, 6, 8, 17.

Theology and Evolution, final is-
sue between, 223.

Theophrastus, 7, 16.

Theosophy, 9.

Tozer, Mr., 30.

Transubstantiation, origin of be-
lief in, 67.

Turgot, 39, 256.

Tylor, Dr., 168. 241, 246.

Tyndall, Professor, 205, 207, 216.

Usher, Archbishop, 103.

274

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION.

Van Helmont, 20.

Vatican Council on Creation,

33.
Vesalius, go.
Vestiges of Creation, 119, 135,

209.
Virgin Mary, 60.
Virgins, Black, 64.
Visual sensations, subjective, 154.
Von Baer, 118, 125, 189, 194,

200.
Von Mohl, 119, 125.
Votive offerings, 62.

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 134-157,

as biologist, 143.

as spiritualist, 145-157.

limitation of natural selec-
tion to man's physical struc-
ture, 144, 235-241.

theory of origin of species

identical with Darwin's, 140.

" Wallace's Line," 139.

Water as primary substance, 7.
Water-worship, 61, 63.
Weismann, 117.
Wells, Dr. W. C, 166.
Wesley, John, 55, 105.
Whewell, Dr., 159.
White, Dr., 103.
Wilberforce, Bishop, and the Or-
igin of Species, 160.
and Huxley, 213.

Wilson, Archdeacon, 161, 2ig.
Winifred's Well, St., 63.
Witchcraft, belief in, 55.
causes of decay of belief in,

98.
Worms, Darwin on the Action of,

168.

Xenophanes, g, 19.

Zahm, Professor, 222.
Zeller, g.
Zeno, 10.

THE END.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S PUBLICATIONS.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SERIES.

T

NOW READY.

HE BEGINNINGS OF ART. By Ernst

Grosse, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Freiburg.
A new vokime in the Anthropological Series, edited by Pro-
fessor Frederick Starr. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth. $1.75.

This is an inquiry into the laws which control the life and development of art, and
into the relations existing between it and certain forms of civilization. The origin of
an artistic activity should be sought among the most primitive peoples, like the native
Australians, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, theBotocudos of Soutli America,
and the Eskimos; and with these alone the author studies his subject. Their arts are
regarded as a social phenomenon and a social function, and are classified as arts of rest
and arts of motion. The arts of rest comprise decoration, first of the body by scarifica-
tion, painting, tattooing, and dress; and then of implements— painting and sculpture ;
while the arts of motion are the dance (a living sculpture), poetry or song, with rhythm,
and music.

TJ^OMANS SHARE IN PRIMITIVE CUL-
l/y TURE. By Otis Tufton Mason, A. M., Curator of the
Department of Ethnology in the United States National Mu-
seum. With numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.75.
"A most interesting re'sran^ of the revelations which science has made concerning
the habits of human beings in primitive times, and especially as to the place, the duties,
and the customs of women." — Philadelphia Inquirer.

n^HE PYGMIES. By A. de Quatrefages, late

■^ Professor of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History,
Paris. With numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.75'
"Probably no one was better equipped to illustrate the general subject than Quatre-
fages. While constantly occupied upon the anatomical and osseous phases of his sub-
ject, he was none the less well acquainted with what literature and history had to say
concerning the pygmies. . . . This book ought to be in every divinity school in which
man as well as God is studied, and from which missionaries go out to convert the human
being of reahty and not the man of rhetoric and text-books." — Boston Literary World.

HE BEGINNINGS OF WRITING. By W. J.

Hoffman, M. D. With numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth,

$1.75.
This interesting book gives a most attractive account of the rude methods employed
by primitive man for recording his deeds. The earliest writing consists of pictographs
which were traced on stone, wood, bone, skins, and various paperlike substances. Dr.
Hoffman shows how the several classes of symbols used in these records are to be in-
terpreted, and traces the growth of conventional signs up to syllabaries and alphabets —
the two classes of signs employed by modern peoples.

IN preparation.

THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS. By Dr. Schmeltz.
THE ZUNI. By Frank Hamilton Gushing.
THE AZTECS. By Mrs, Zelia Nuttall.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

T

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

NEW EDITION OF PROF. HUXLEY'S ESSAYS.

/COLLECTED ESSA YS. By Thomas H. Huxley.

^"^ New complete edition, with revisions, the Essays being grouped
accoi-ding to general subject. In nine volumes, a new Intro-
duction accompanying each volume. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25 per
volume.

Vol. I.— method AND RESULTS.

Vol. II.— DARWINIANA.

Vol. III.— science AND EDUCATION.

Vol. IV.— science AND HEBREW TRADITION.

Vol. v.— SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN TRADITION.

Vol. VI.— HUME.

Vol. VII.— MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE.

Vol. VIII.— DISCOURSES, BIOLOGICAL AND GEOLOGICAL.

Vol. IX.— EVOLUTION AND ETHICS, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

" Mr. Huxley has covered a vast variety of topics during the last quarter of a
century. It gives one an agreeable surprise to look over the tables of contents and
note the immense territory which he has explored. To read these books carefully
and studiously is to become thoroughly acquainted with the most advanced thought
on a large number of topics." — New York Herald.

" The series will be a welcome one. There are few writings on the more abstruse
problems of science better adapted to reading by the general public, and in this form
the books will be well in the reach of the investigator. . . . The revisions are the last
expected to be made by the author, and his introductions are none of earlier date
than a few months ago [1893], so they may be considered his final and most authorita-
tive utterances." — Chicago Times.

" It was inevitable that his essays should be called for in a completed form, and they
will be a source of delight and profit to all who read them. He has always commanded
a hearing, and as a master of the literary style in writing scientific essays he is worthy
of a place among the great English essayists of the day. This edition of his essays
will be widely read, and gives his scientific work a permanent form." — Boston Herald.

" A man whose brilliancy is so constant as that of Prof. Huxley will always com-
mand readers; and the utterances which are here collected are not the least in weight
and luminous beauty of those with which the author has long delighted the reading
world." — Philadelphia Press.

"The connected arrangement of the essays which their reissue permits brings into
fuller relief Mr. Huxley's masterly powers of exposition. Sweeping the subject-matter
clear of all logomachies, he lets the light of common day fall upon it. He shows that
the place of hypothesis in science, as the starting point of verification of the phenomena
to be explained, is but an extension of the assumptions which underlie actions in every-
day affairs; and that the method of scientific investigation is only the method which
rules the ordinary business of life." — London Ch?-onicle.

New York: D. APPLETON "k CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

r

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

'HE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY OF HER^

BERT SPENCER. In nine volumes. i2mo. Cloth, $2.00
per volume. The titles of the several volumes are as follows .

(i.) FIRST PRINCIPLES.

I. The Unknowable. ' II. Laws of the Knowable.

(2.) THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Biology. II. The Inductions of Biology.

III. The Evolution of Life.

(3.) THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY. Vol. II.

IV. Morphological Development. V. Physiological Development.

VI. Laws of Multiplication,

(4.) THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Psychology. III. General Synthesis.

II. The Inductions of Psychology, IV. Special Synthesis.

V. Physical Synthesis.

(S.) THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. II.

VI. Special Analysis. VIII. Congruities.

VII. General Analysis. IX. Corollaries.

(6.) THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Vol. I.

I. The Data of Sociology. II. The Inductions of Sociology.

III. The Domestic Relations.
(7.) THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Vol. II.

IV. Ceremonial Institutions. V. Political Institutions.

(8.) THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Vol. III.

VI. Ecclesiastical Institutions. VII. Professional Institutions.

VIII. Industrial Institutions.
(9.) THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. Vol.1.

I. The Data of Ethics. II. The Inductions of Ethics.

HI. The Ethics of Individual Life.

(10.) THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. Vol. II.
IV. The Ethics of Social Life: Justice.
V. The Ethics of Social Life : Negative Beneficence.
VI. The Ethics of Social Life: Positive Beneficence.

r\ESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY. A Cyclopcedia of

-^—^ Social Facts. Representing the Constitution of Every Type

and Grade of Human Society, Past and Present, Stationary and

Progressive. By Herbert Spencer. Eight Nos., Royal Folio.

No. I. ENGLISH $4 00

No. 11. MEXICANS, CENTRAL AMERICANS, CHIBCHAS, and PE-
RUVIANS 4 00

No. III. LOWEST RACES, NEGRITO RACES, and MALAYO-POLY-

NESIAN RACES 4 00

No. IV. AFRICAN RACES 4 00

No. V. ASIATIC RACES 4 00

No. VI. AMERICAN RACES 4 00

No. VII. HEBREWS and PHCENICIANS 4 00

No. VIII. FRENCH (Double Number) 7 00

New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

T

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
HE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONS:

Egypt, Syria, and Assyria. By Professor Maspero. Edited
by the Rev. Professor Sayce. Translated by M. L. McClure.
With Map, 3 Colored Plates, and over 400 Illustrations. Uni-
form with "The Dawn of Civilization." Quarto. Cloth, $7.50.

This important work Is a companion volume to "The Dawn of Civilization," and
carries the history of the ancient peoples of the East from the twenty-fourth to the
ninth century before our era. It embraces the sojourn of the Children of Israel in
Egypt, and shows the historic connection between Egypt and Syria during the cen-
turies immediately following the exodus. The book embodies the latest discoveries in
the field of Egyptian and Oriental archaeology, and there is no other work dealing so
exhaustively with the period covered.

T

HE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION. (Egypt

AND Chald^a.) By Prof. G. Maspero. Edited by Rev.

Prof. A. H. Sayce. Translated by M. L. McClure. Revised

and brought up to date by the Author. With Map and over

470 Illustrations. Quarto. Cloth, $7.50.

" The most sumptuous and elaborate work which has yet appeared on this theme.
. . . The book should be in every well-equipped Oriental library, as the most com-
plete work on the dawn of civilization. Its careful reading and studying will open a
world of thought to any diligent student, and very largely broaden and enlarge his
views of the grandeur, the stability, and the positive contributions of the civilization of
that early day to the life and culture of our own times." — Chicago Stajidard.

" By all odds the best account of Egyptian and Assyrian theology, or, more properly
speaking, theosophy, with which we are acquainted. . . . The book will arouse many
enthusiams. Its solid learning will enchant the scholar — its brilliancy will charm the
general reader and tempt him into a region which he may have hesitated to enter." —
TAe Outlook.

" The most complete reconstruction of that ancient life which has 3'^et appeared in
print. Maspero's great book will remain the standard work for a long time to come."
— London Daily News.

L

IFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA.

By G. Maspero, late Director of Archaeology in Egypt, and

Member of the Institute of France. Translated by Alice

Morton, With 188 Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"A lucid sketch, at once popular and learned, of daily life in Egypt at the time of
Rameses II, and of Assyria in that of Assurbanipal. ... As an Orientalist, M. Mas-
pero stands in the front rank, and his learning is so well digested and so admirably sub-
dued to the service of popular exposition, that it nowhere overwhelms and always in-
terests the reader." — London Titnes.

" Only a writer who had distinguished himself as a student of Egyptian and As-
syrian antiquities could have produced this work, which has none of the features of a
modem book of travels in the East, but is an attempt to deal with ancient life as if one
had been a contemporary with the people whose civilization and social usages are
very largely restored." — Boston Herald.

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
piONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA.

Sketches of their Lives and Scientific Work. Edited and re-
vised by William Jay Youmans, M. D. With Portraits.
8vo. Cloth, $4.00.

Impelled solely by an enthusiastic love of Nature, and neither asking
nor receiving outside aid, these early workers opened the way and initiated
the movement through which American science has reached its present com-
manding position. This book gives some account of these men, their early
struggles, their scientific labors, and, whenever possible, something of their
personal characteristics. This information, often very difficult to obtain, has
been collected from a great variety of sources, with the utmost care to secure
accuracy. It is presented in a series of sketches, some fifty in all, each with
a single exception accompanied with a well-authenticated portrait.

*' Fills a place that needed filling, and is likely to be widely read." — N. Y, Sun.

" It is certainly a useful and convenient volume, and readable too, if we judge cor-
rectly of the degree of accuracy of the whole by critical examination of those cases
in which our own knowledge enables us to form an opinion. ... In general, it seems
to us that the handy volume is specially to be commended for setting in just historical
perspective many of the earlier scientists who are neither very generally nor very well
known." — New York Evenhig Post.

"A wonderfully interesting volume. Many a young man will find it fascinating.
The compilation of the book is a work well done, well worth the doing." — Philadelphia
Press.

" One of the most valuable books which we have received." — Boslon Advertiser.

" A book of no little educational value. . . . An extremely valuable work of refer-
ence."— Boston Beacon.

" A valuable handbook for those whose work runs on these same lines, and is likely
to prove of lasting interest to those for whom ' les docjiments hti7nain' are second only
to history in importance — nay, are a vital part of history." — Boston Transcript.

"A biographical history of science in America, noteworthy for its completeness and
scope. . . . All of the sketches are excellently prepared and unusually interesting." —
Chicago Record.

"Oneof the most valuable contributions to American literature recently made. . . .
The pleasing style in which these sketches are written, the plans taken to secure ac-
curacy, and the information convej^ed, combine to give them great value and interest.
No better or more inspiring reading could be placed m the hands of an intelligent and
aspiring young man." — New York Christian Work.

" A book whose interest and value are not for to-day or to-morrow, but for indefinite
time." — Rochester Herald.

_ " It is difficult to imagine a reader of ordinary intelligence who would not be enter-
tained by the book. . . . Conciseness, exactness, urbanity of tone, and interestingness
are the four qualities which chiefly impress the reader of these sketches." — Buffalo
Express.

"Full of interesting and valuable matter." — The Churchman.

New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

^THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ENG-

LISH NATION. With Special Reference to Epochs and
Crises. A History of and for the People. By W. H. S.
Aubrey, LL. D. In Three Volumes. i2ino. Cloth, $4.50.

" The merit of this work is intrinsic. It rests on the broad intelligence and true
philosophy of the method employed, and the coherency and accuracy of the results
reached. The scope of the work is marvelous. Never was there more crowded into
three small volumes. But the saving of space is not by the sacrifice of substance or
of style. The broadest view of the facts and forces embraced by the subject is exhibited
with a clearness of arrangement and a definiteness of application that render it per-
ceptible to the simplest apprehension." — hew York Mail atid Express.

"A useful and thorough piece of work. One of the best treatises which the
general reader can use." — Lojidon Daily Chronicle.

"Conceived in a popular spirit, yet with strict regard to the modern standards.
The title is fully borne out. No want of color in the descriptions." — London Daily
News.

"The plan laid down results in an admirable English history." — London Morning
Pos^t.

"Dr. Aubrey has supplied a want. His method is undoubtedly the right one." —
Pall Mall Gazette.

" It is a distinct step forward in history writing; as far ahead of Green as he was of
Macaulay, though on a differtnt Hue. Green gives the picture of England at different
times — Aubrey goes deeper, showing the causes which led to the changes." — New
York World.

" A work that will commend itself to the student of history, and as a comprehen-
sive and convenient reference book." — The Argonaut.

" Contains much that the ordinary reader can with difficulty find elsewhere unless
he has access to a library of special works." — Chicago Dial.

" Up to date in its narration of fact, and in its elucidation of those great principles
that underlie all vital and worthy history. . . . The painstaking division, along with
the admirably complete index, will make it easy work for any student to get definite
views of any era, or any particular feature of it. . . . The work strikes one as being
more comprehensive than many that cover far more space." — The Christian In-
telligencer.

"One of the most elaborate and noteworthy of recent contributions to historical
literature." — New Havefi Register.

" As a popular history it possesses great merits, and in many particulars is excelled
by none. It is full, careful as to dates, maintains a generally praiseworthy impartiality,
and it is interesting to read." — Buffalo Express.

" These volumes are a surprise and in their way a marvel. . . . They constitute an
almost encylopsedia of English history, condensing in a marvelous manner the facts
and principles developed in the history of the English nation. . . . The work is one of
unsurpassed value to the historical student or even the general reader, and when more
widely known will no doubt be appreciated as one of the remarkable contributions to
English history published in the ct.x\tVirY."— Chicago Universalist.

"In every page Dr. Aubrey writes with the far reaching relation of contemporary
incidents to the whole subject. The amount of matter these three volumes contam is
marvelous. The style in which they are written is more than satisfactory. . . . The
work is one of unusual importance." — Hartford Post.

New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

DATE DUE

AY 3 0 20*

UNIVERSITY PRODUCTS, INC. #859-5503